I think everything that happens or exists is due to a collection of circumstances. A series of things happen that together cause something else to happen.
I’ll use my recent injury as an example. At the very beginning of May I became a member of Page Street writers cafe in San Francisco. On Friday May 3rd I decided to go there for the first time. I found a parking place directly across the street – what luck! Before going into the writers cafe I thought I’d take a walk to enjoy the day and to see what the neighborhood was like. It was a beautiful spring day, the sky clear and blue, and the weather warm but not hot. I walked slowly down the street, enjoying the Victorian homes and the large green trees lining the street. As I was looking around I tripped on a piece of sidewalk that was uneven because the roots of a tree were pushing it up. I was looking around, not down, and I didn’t notice it until I tripped. Down I went, scraping the palms of both hands and the left side of my face, breaking my favorite sunglasses, and worst of all fracturing both kneecaps.
There were a lot of circumstances at play that caused my fall. I decided to go to the cafe that particular day because I was feeling bored instead of waiting until the following week which had been my original plan. The day was beautiful which encouraged me to take a walk down the street and rather than looking down (if I had been looking down I would have likely seen that raised piece of the sidewalk and stepped around it instead of tripping over it) I was looking around at the beauty of the buildings and trees. I never did make it to the writers cafe that day – instead I ended up in the ER for the rest of the afternoon and was trapped in leg braces for two months. Apparently it’s rare for someone to break both kneecaps, which the doctor said was the result of my osteoporosis. When I parked my car, rather than being a lucky thing, I didn’t notice the sign saying that it was a street cleaning day on tha side of the street and I ended up with a $90 parking ticket.
My injury was caused by a collection of many circumstances. There are a lot of “if onlys” – if only I’d waited until the following week to go to the cafe. If only I’d seen the street cleaning sign I wouldn’t have parked in that space, I would have saved $90, and since I hadn’t seen any other parking places around I might have changed my mind and gone back home or taken myself out to lunch. If only – this is a big one – I had been looking down at the sidewalk I wouldn’t have tripped and would not have broken my kneecaps.
I’m still healing from the injury and haven’t been to the Page Street writers cafe yet, almost three months later. My hope is to finally go the beginning of August. In the meantime I’m doing lots of PT, learning how to walk up and down stairs, resting, and trying to practice patience. I’m still having pain and discomfort but I know I’ll get through it and be as good as new, or at least get used to a “new normal,” at some point. And because I’m tired of writing about this, I’ll be able to write about other things again.