The Rest of My Life: Fate Accompli

            Everything is different because of everything else

             I came across that line this morning in the book I'm currently reading.  It's one of those lines that makes me stop and go back, re-read... then look up for a few seconds, stare into space, and think about.  This is where speed-reading fails.  Speed-reading is like driving at 150 mph.  You're getting there faster.  But you're missing the scenery along the way.

             Everything is different because of everything else

 

            Sometimes, we stop and wonder how things might have turned out if we'd made different decisions in life. 

            Yes we do.  All of us do it.

            What if?

            What if I'd taken that job after all instead of turning it down?

            What if I'd moved to that place instead of staying here?

            What if I'd gone on that date, instead of getting cold feet and crying off - leaving that person, who might have changed everything about our life, to chalk us up to another false hope?

          Chance encounters which led to existences that would never have existed otherwise.

          We make our decisions.  And on the basis of them, a whole new train of events takes place that would never have happened otherwise.  If we'd decided to take that job after all, maybe we'd have been in the office that day when a colleague had a heart attack, and we'd have been right there - right place, right time - to administer CPR and save them.  Instead of which, the others in that office didn't know what to do - and that person didn't survive.

            But then... we'd never have known them, anyway.  We'd never have known - full stop.

 

            Of course, if you believe in parallel universes, we're living out the consequences of those decisions-not-taken, anyway.  Somewhere, on another plane of existence, that colleague is being saved.  And because they live, they go on to do something they would otherwise never have done.

            Save someone else.  Have a child.  Found a charity.  Rob a bank.

 

            Everything is different because of everything else

 

            Something happened to me way back, when I was seventeen - not long after I'd started that first job I wrote about in my last post.

            I had my first motorbike - my pride and joy.  The most expensive and most cherished thing I'd ever owned.  A red Suzuki GT 185.  £435 brand new in 1976 - but I was buying it on hire-purchase.  £6.66 a week over 2 years (including the first year's insurance) out of my £22 per week take-home pay. Over a quarter of my weekly income, but worth it in every way.  It gave me my first taste of freedom and speed.  In the evenings, after work, I'd take it out for a burn on the local roads, pushing it to try to reach that elusive and enticing 'ton-up.'  I cleaned it every day at work - smothering it with Gunk, then hosing it off and buffing up the chrome with Solvol.  I bought crash bars for it, and a carrier and top box.  I loved it more than anything else.

 

            One morning, on my way to work, a lad from the same village (who worked close to where I worked) appeared in my mirrors on his Yamaha RD200.  As we approached a steep, narrow hill on the main drag between Totnes and Buckfastleigh, he raced past me - and past a milk tanker just ahead of me.

            I wasn't standing for that.  I changed down - the engine screaming beneath me - and made pursuit.

            I was almost half-way past the tanker when an articulated lorry appeared over the brow of the hill and bore down on me.  I was in his space.  We were on collision course, and just seconds apart.

            I didn't have the speed or time to get past the tanker, and it was too late to brake and try to get in behind it.

            I saw this monster closing down.

            I pulled into the side of the tanker.

            I remember saying 'Oh no!'

            I saw the artic driver's face.

            I knew this was it.

            I closed my eyes...

 

            The next thing I knew was something that, by rights, I should never have known.

            The artic had gone sweeping past - so close that I felt the brush of it against my right elbow.

            And I was out the other side.  Still alive.  And free.

 

            When I arrived at work, I switched off the bike and got off - and almost fell over because I was shaking so much.  I sat on the ground, with my head between my knees, and replayed those moments in my mind.

            The artic bearing down on me.  The horrified face of the driver.  The blackness as my eyes closed...

            And then the daylight again, a split second later.

            How had that just happened?

            How had I come through?

            How was I still here?

            As I got up, I felt a burning pain in my lower left leg. I checked.  Where I'd pulled into the side of that tanker, my leg must have touched its rear tyre.  My wellington there was burned through, in a gash about 8 inches long.  Likewise my jeans underneath  And likewise my leg.  The edge of the tyre had sliced through it all.  In trying to save myself from oncoming death, I'd come closer to killing myself under the tanker.  As little as an inch or so further back, and I'd have been dragged underneath it.

 

            Those few moments still haunt me now - fifty years later.  Sometimes, I wake from them covered in sweat, with my heart pounding.  Even thinking about it makes me jump, gasp, hyper-ventilate.  Fifty years later.

            Really, I should not be here today to write this.  I should have been killed under that artic.  Or under that tanker.

            Seconds.  Inches.  That's all.

            But I survived.

            As rational as I normally am - not given to fanciful notions, or ideas of fate - I can't help but feel that it must have been for a reason.

            And I can't help but ponder about how different so, so many things would have been had I not made it through.

            It almost doesn't bear thinking about.

            But I'm alive.  So I think about it.

            Always.

 

           Everything is different because of everything else