I was recently talking with a friend about a car crash I had a few years ago:
http://www.thefreeths.com/millie/2000/tod031000.htmShe asked "…there's no way to tell what damage has been done underneath the skin - Is that something that still feels right to you?"
On a physical level, I was sore where the seltbelt grabbed me, although I had forgotten that, and after a visit to a chiropracter my back is right again, after my first head on crash - a mirror image of the Volvo crash, oddly - in 1989, and exacerbated by the crash in 2000.
The chiropracter asked me if I had anticipated both crashs, yes I had, ahh she said. She said that my back had tensed in anticipation which had damaged the muscles, the muscles had healed long ago but had retained a 'memory' of the crash, so they were tensing and holding a position to prevent injury which they no longer needed to hold, because the injury had long since healed. So a couple of pulls and stretches and cracks and all was well. Back in 2003 I went to a Turkish bath in Istanbul and had a large hairy sweaty Turkish man sit on me, and my back and ribs cracked in places I didn't believe possible! It was nice, but it was a generic loosening, not the very specific work of the chiropracter.
So I no longer think of the lasting result as damage, but the learning is certainly still inside me. One thing that I still am very aware of is that I'm not afraid of crashing a car. In fact, I think everyone should have a car crash. After you pass your test, they should send you to an old airfield where you have mandatory skid pan and safe driving training. Then you actually get to crash a car. I believe that many - maybe most - people drive too defensively, in fear of what might happen if they crash. I guess that's fuelled by TV car crashes which are always mre dramatic than real life, evidenced by the stunt driver's need for ramps and air cannon to spin the car up in the air. Watch the police chase TV programs, cars never crash like that in real life. A crash makes a dull 'crump' sound, not the bashing and crashing of movies.
I learned that actually a crash is not that bad at all, and is actually quite exhillarating. And I think this approach would give drivers a much clearer sense of where their boundaries are (in all senses) which I believe is a good thing.
If you travel to other parts of the world, e.g. North Africa, the way people drive can seem terrifying. Yet after a few days there it all made much more sense to me than the British way. It made me wonder how much of our congestion problems are caused by people sticking to the territory marked out by arbitrary white lines, when there is clearly room for 5 lanes across a Motorway as would be the case in Cairo where they ignore the white lines. And also drivers' fear of bumping into each other wastes a lot of space too. In Cairo, a millimeter is as good as a mile. A miss is a miss. And if you do hit someone, well, who cares? It's only a car. Not something to be revered and worshipped like in the UK.
I think they focus on where they want to get to, rather than on the quality of the experience in getting there. I need heated seats in this weather, and a good stereo, and cruise control. And power steering, and so on. The first time I got a car with electric windows, I used to wind them down before getting to a security barrier because I was embarrased in case the security guard thought I was being pretentious. When I had a car pre-power steering, how did I turn the wheel? Brute force!
And with drive by wire electronics and sat nav and automatic gearboxes, I think we are in danger of becoming like the little alien in the jeweller's body in Men in Black, operating by a few little levers and buttons, seeing the world through someone else's eyes and missing out on the raw joy of driving a battered, rusty old thing, flinging it round corners and occasionally bumping into another with nothing more than a few obscene gestures exchanged.
A couple of friends of mine had crashes where they got out of their cars and went to talk to the other drivers involved. The other drivers ignore them, looked right through them. And then, the realisation sank in. They both said to themselves, "Oh my God! I'm dead! they can't see me!
Both of them described the same experience, of going back to their cars, fully expecting to see their own bodies in there.
And me? After the crash I couldn't stop asking myself the question "why did I survive?" Of all the logical reasons, the one which my unconscious seemed to settle on as the most reassuring, the most plausible, the one that made most sense, was
"I didn't survive. I am dead. My life from the moment of the crash on is an illusion created by my mind to save me from the reality that I am dying while my family, who I'll never see again, have no idea where I am"
And then it got me thinking - if I'm now making all this up, if this is really a hallucination in my dying moments, then why do bad things happen? Why would I do that to myself? So I started only imagining good things happening, and I started expecting only to get what I want. And it's odd, because for the most part that's exactly what happens. Not all the time, I guess my mind still wants me to not get big headed, even in death.
And it makes me wonder, what would your life be like if you knew that you are in your dying moments now, and everything that is happening is created to hide that reality from you, and so why would you ever create anything that isn't the way you want it to be? I mean, it's your life, what's left of it, so you may as well imagine whatever you want - literally.
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