Close calls and second chances, and life beyond them

One thing I’m eternally grateful for is I’ve lived life a few different ways during my lifetime, and I’m really thankful to be relatively healthy at my age with what I’ve done.  

I know so many like me, who have tasted life in different ways and who have gleaned wisdom along the way.  It creates in us perspective and an appreciation of grace.

Some of the risks I’ve taken include driving a car over 210 kilometres per hour, basically double the speed limit, and I’ve been in several near misses on the roads and elsewhere.  We’ve all had those close calls.

Once I chugged a whole bottle of rum, and that, among a plethora of other regrettable drinking escapades where I was the life of the party or drank alone.  As a younger person, I’ve used anabolic steroids and illicit drugs.  I smoked cigarettes heavily for nearly 15 years.  Twice, many years ago, I got too close to contemplating my own demise.

In my earlier working days, I took many health and safety risks that until now I’ve gotten away with.  In the surf, once I nearly drowned.  I’ve been king hit by a coward’s punch, receiving a broken nose that required surgery.  I’ve had several injuries that could’ve been much worse, including one where I almost severed a femoral artery.

Besides having numerous near misses with cars and trucks on the roads riding a bike, I’ve almost knocked a man off his bike in a car I was driving, and when I was a six-year-old child, I was impacted by a car.

Apart from all this, I’ve been tremendously blessed to not yet have to deal with a terminal illness.  And, if this counts, once I exorcised a demon from a home of a man I was counselling—and apparently it worked (I just should never have attempted that on my own).

Many of you reading this would nod in agreement in terms of your own life.  So many people I know have taken even riskier life paths than I have, and I’m often inspired by stories of survival and recovery I hear when I’m counselling and elsewhere.

Equally, I know of those who have tragically been taken, and none of this diminishes their lives, and it makes us consider with solemnity and respect their loved ones who have been left behind—the grief they’ve bravely borne.  And it underscores how fortunate many of us have been.

One of the conclusions we can make from this is life is long enough for most of us that we’re not condemned by our pasts.  Life is long enough for most of us that we have time to reflect as impetus to changing our way of living.

But only we can take those as opportunities.  We’re the only ones who can.

For those loved ones of ours who equally live dangerously, theirs too is their own opportunity, and we who look on must simply trust that they might embrace life, accepting their decisions and the outcomes as they occur.  Not saying that’s easy!  It isn’t.

It’s hard to make another person’s decision for them.  Indeed, it’s madness.  It’s hard enough making our own decisions, especially those that require a sustained will, like overcoming addictions and forming new habits.

Yes, it’s hard enough living our own lives, and impossible to live another’s.

But the fact is, as we reflect over the things we’ve gotten away with, today or tomorrow is the opportunity to do life differently, to make the most of the second and thirty-second chances we’ve had.

When we consider the things that haven’t cost us dearly, we’ve got a lot to be thankful for.  Yet it leaves those who have lost loved ones in similar situations feeling cheated.  Life is fickle and yet most of us have been significantly blessed by many second chances.

It’s something to be genuinely grateful for.