You’re So Lucky?

I was riding up in the elevator today, and I overheard an interesting conversation. It was between two middle-aged men, I’d guess about 45 to 50, who were discussing about a friend of theirs who had gotten into an accident. According to their story, their friend had been on the freeway, and was changing into the right lane, when a kid not paying attention slammed into him, t-boning the cars, at about 75 mph on the passenger’s side. Their friend was the only one in the car. He went to the hospital with three broken ribs, but was otherwise intact except for shock and some bangs, bruises, and some minor cuts. The car, though, was totaled.

Now, what was the first thing that the listener said? “Well, he’s lucky; he didn’t get hurt too bad.”

I remember standing there and thinking, “Humana…what?” This guy just got into a 70+ mph car wreck, has a totaled car, three broken ribs, and trauma injuries, and his friend’s saying “he’s lucky?” Why do we do that?

Why is it that our first reaction to someone surviving some horrible accident the fact of how “lucky” they are? I’m sorry, but to me, that seems awfully unlucky. Lucky are those people who don’t get into accidents. Lucky are those who can avoid that kind of stress in their lives. Not the people who happen to, by skill or “divine intervention”, make it through the tragedy alright. They’re not lucky, I don’t think.

In our everyday speech, and our everyday words, we say a lot of things that we don’t really think about. Someone asks us how we are, and we say “fine.” To be honest, the person asking doesn’t really want to know, and we don’t really want to tell, so we just nonchalantly say both phrases without really thinking.

Self-awareness is very important. If we can’t be even self-observant, then I don’t think that we can rightly see our way through.

- Kyle

~ by Karratti on Tuesday, 20 November, 2007.