A cardboard box was in the middle of the pavement. I kicked at it. My leg fell into the coal hole whose cover had been removed. I had to go and have stitches to the cut.
This was 1974. I had come out of my rented flat near Gloucester Road Tube, in West London. I have no doubt I had been pranked and cruelly so.
Any person walking there on that day could have been the one injured. The key to it is in the “could have been”. The future perfect conditional is the closest description of my accident. It was waiting to happen to me. The part I played in it was really rather incidental.
When people say, “Everything happens for a reason”, I disagree. In the universe of time, I say, “Everything happens!” Simply because happenings happen, their sufficiency is self-contained. The richness of the moment of what happens floods my consciousness with joys unending.
The list of circumstances which set me up for this fall is as lengthy and varied as those which could equally have existed and resulted in no fall at all.
I can easily call to mind incidents (a nice neutral word) in which I was involved in road accidents, as the driver, as a passenger, or a pedestrian. My gratitude at having survived these few occasions of danger has close similarities to my gratitude for waking up safe and well every new day among my family and friends.
What chain of consequences might have followed after I kicked that cardboard box in 1974? My tibia could have fractured, causing immediate, severe pain. Poor medical treatment or infection could have left me with deformity or walking instability, and my life might have changed forever.
None of this happened. The point is that I almost never think back to that day. When I go there, I give no thought to what might have been. I never think about the person who set up the trap.
Where is this train of thought about events of a life threatening nature leading me, I wonder?
in my EveryNow blog posts, I write without dissembling or self-delusion about revisiting and rediscovering my time as a baby, child and adolescent.
I have come across no factors in my history which severely warped or misdirected my ability to maintain my identity and to lead a full productive life.
This life my parents constructed for me was primed for my safety and security. I cannot claim against them or blame them for laying foundations of my life based on anything other than human goodness and compassion.
I now understand I was equipped in rudimentary ways which I would not have been fully aware of as I entered the age of reason and self-awareness, to cleave to the source of my own humanity, compassion and inner peace.
My core being had never been subject to threat or ill-treatment. Curiously enough, that fact felt like a disadvantage when I compared myself to my peers, some of whom were savvy and street wise, one or two even street fighters.
I had periods of deep depression in my early 20s. I was hospitalised. My parents great fear was that I might lose my independent ability as an adult to take care of my basic needs.
Today I am retired. In the foreseeable future I see nothing stands in the way of a healthy married life, with children, grandchildren and more loyal friends than at any previous time in my life.
I see no single factor or event in my life story which prevented me from falling into ruin, whether physical ruin or psychological degradation.
In 1965, I wonder what held me back from refusing my girlfriend’s offer of shooting up her heroin? Caution, cowardice, informed fear? All of these.
In 1982, I was confronted by a massive and tragic life altering situation. I had clear choices. I could give up trying to fight my side for my future, not ask for help, and walk away. Without doubt I would have reverted to being a nobody, wretched and diminished perhaps for life.
Faced with a clear and present danger, I fought as hard as I knew how to fight. Against the odds, I saved myself and others from the brink of a disaster whose consequences would have damaged at least three lives, possibly beyond repair.
Nature affects the assumptions I make about the frames of reference I am equipped with. Nurture affects how I allocate and deploy the choices I make according to what I believe is best for myself and others.
I’m talking about the cultivation of a belief system linked to my personal view of the world I live and move around in, in relation to the most sacred centre of my integrity.
I have been composing my EveryNow blog posts and showing them on my Facebook pages since 2018. I now have readers in roughly 30 countries.
EveryNow speaks for itself. The belief systems that it relies on and navigates by come from never ending sources of ancient established spirituality. I hardly know what labels apply. The structures owe their existence to Zen, Taoism, Apophatic Mysticism, and to good old Powers of Positive Thinking, amongst others.
My story about the lessons I’ve learned from the Cardboard Box episode shows me that I have nothing that is specially of my own making to impart to the world.
I don’t intend to convert, or evangelise. My day to day, moment to moment intense experience of being alive and in Life, so heightened by my sudden unforeseen heart openings of 2013 — the Year of my Life — continue to need sharing to the best of my ability.
I proffer no message, hold out no quick fix. I am convinced that the epiphanies I have lived are available as positive transformative experiences to other people.
I am so graced by the massive shifts in my life, I will not ignore them, nor keep them to myself.
I am just this guy with his blog and the delicious sense of being on fire with love flames that burn, burn, and consume nothing. I am not about promotion. I am about sharing at high visibility with maximum openness.
I hope my readers will be motivated to read on, when they strongly feel that life in any formulation or format is worth continuing to live and enjoy EveryNow
~ Love is present EveryNow
The View at 72+ 