False Thoughts

While sitting through traffic on last night’s commute my imagination bested me. Tired from sitting at a desk job, my hips were resisting the final hour of seated confinement. In an effort to adjust I thrust my left leg out to rest along the door. As the nearby car drifted towards my lane I suddenly wondered what it would be like to get hit at this angle. Perhaps it would be the right position to merit nere a scratch, or else I’d manage a freak fracture. Freak accidents. I had just gotten off the phone with a good friend during which we once again concluded that our Creator God is remarkable. When He created the first humans, He knew that it would take us 2000+ years to work out exactly “How?”. Here in 2016 we have only scratched the surface despite vast medical and scientific improvements as each hour passes.

 

What would my reaction be if I became paralyzed? I think “irate” would cover it. Of course my immediate response may be shock. But as the black truck glided near my lane again, I truly believe I would have a reaction that sourced itself in Entitlement. Though I’m scarcely above 25, I can remember when times were simpler, and not just as a result of idyllic youth fraught with kickball in the cul-de-sac. Perhaps I romanticize the past too much when I claim that expectations and reactions in past generations were gentler. For the most part, earth changed slowly and prior to the Industrial Revolution folks were allowed time to adapt to innovation. In this day where movie selections change with a few clicks, tweets can detail events play-by-play, and I can look up the heart condition: Transposition of the Greater Vessel and watch a real time surgery ablation for tachycardia arrhythmia; there are many opportunities and much to keep up with

 

While overwhelming, it is equally exciting to have so much experience available when and where we desire. Such was my reasoning for feeling “entitled.” In this imaginary car crash where my leg freakishly breaks due to unchangeable laws in geometry and physics as well as anatomy… I should expect that no matter how difficult the injury to fix, it could be done. And naturally would be. Why wouldn’t someone want to heal me? By being alive in this era, I’m a birthright benefactor of science and skill. (In hindsight, this mentality ignores the hundreds of others statistically also caught in compromising situations and the real limitations of Emergency Responders seeing to everyone’s needs.)

 

On this feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, I was contemplating suffering. However just or unjust, suffering will always be a part of this earthly life and cannot be escaped. The varying degrees of suffering are often pinned to life choices, but sometimes are freakish and without explanation. No matter how science and technology progress humanity will trump with free will. Clearly, we can often explain “How” but while God may not will my paralyzation, and doctors may will my full recovery… I’m not always sure we need to know “Why?”

 

And a final thought, since my imagination is clearly exercising… who’s to say that had I not made the thrusting shift a hypothetical leg injury would have been much worse? Perhaps paralyzation was a mercy, and I was spared a graver fate. Today was a good lesson:

I may be “entitled” to good health by God's love and Man's evolution… but there is a Christian responsibility to respond to life’s surprises with Faith and Charity.