Last weekend, my beloved mother crashed her brand new bike the second time riding it. She managed to fracture her collarbone. While most people who break this bone snap it in the middle, not her: She somehow broke it towards the very end of the bone. As such, it was not healing naturally: One part of her shoulder was pulling the broken piece down, while another ligament or tendon or something was pulling the other piece up.
She left the hospital after surgery at about 5:00 and has been just kind of sitting in the living room watching TV since. I mean, what else is there for her to do? She got two pins and a screw put in to keep it in place.
This whole ordeal has served to remind me that I am not invincible. Nobody is. People who treat their bodies as if they are tend to be on the more severe side of the idiot/asshat spectrum. (I see that a lot riding my bike to school every day - idiots darting in and out of traffic on their 'fixies'. If the cars don't harm them, their knees will sure regret all of this in another thirty years. Fixed gear bikes are just terrible for knees.)
Anyways, mortality.
"We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever." -Carl Sagan, 'Cosmos'
We each only have a limited amount of time on this planet. That's kind of been an underlying theme of this blog for the past few weeks. People often forget this, so spend your time wisely. Have a good time. Go for a walk in the rain. Stop and smell the roses. Jump off of the high dive. Enjoy yourself and be yourself, because you are literally the only one in the universe that can do that.
And don't forget to smile at anyone who tells you these things are not as equally important as a career. I find it interesting that we have a career project, yet few teachers ever tell us to smile and enjoy ourselves.
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