{"id":25552,"date":"2018-09-07T20:43:10","date_gmt":"2018-09-08T01:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/?p=25552"},"modified":"2018-09-07T20:48:39","modified_gmt":"2018-09-08T01:48:39","slug":"brush-with-high-speed-blowout-leaves-me-thinking-about-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=25552","title":{"rendered":"Brush with high-speed blowout leaves me thinking about death"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The technician looked at me as though he had seen a ghost.<\/p>\n

“You almost got yourself killed,”<\/em> he said quietly.<\/p>\n

I was almost back to my suburb Friday evening when I had a blowout on I-20 east of Birmingham. I was going faster than the law prefers when I heard a sudden noise that I find hard to describe. That noise immediately turned into a loud rumble. The car was hard to control. I can’t remember exactly what I did, but once I regained full control, I was on the exit to my neighborhood.<\/p>\n

My regular car repair place was already closed, so I pulled into the Walmart auto center. An hour later, I was facing the technician who had pulled the tire off the car. He wanted to show me the hole in my tire — and he wanted to know how I had avoided losing control and killing myself.<\/p>\n

After he showed me the gaping hole on the inward-facing side of the tire, I had the same question he did. Why didn’t I completely lose control and wreck? It would have been so easy to do that, especially at high speeds on a crowded rush-hour interstate highway.<\/p>\n

I had the same question I always have after incidents which leave me realizing that I could have been killed. What was the difference between me and the hundreds of other people who died in very similar accidents today? I don’t know the answer to that.<\/p>\n

The tire technician told me that I either hit something on the highway and didn’t realize it or else there was a flaw in the tire. I’ll never know. (A friend who took a look at it suspects a spontaneous issue with the tire, because he said there are no obvious markings that would indicate\u00a0abnormal scuffs or residue.)<\/p>\n

We go through life ignoring the fact that our lives are at the mercy of a thousand things that could go wrong at any moment. If we allowed ourselves to think about all those things each day, we would be afraid to ever leave our homes.<\/p>\n

A tire can burst. Another drive could carelessly crash head-on into us. Electrical problems in wiring could start a fire. We could slip and fall into the path of equipment. We could fall down stairs. We could slip in a bathtub. The list of ways in which we could die is almost endless.<\/p>\n

For me, it was a piece of rubber that failed tonight. I should have lost control. I should have crashed into another car. I should have had a good chance of dying, especially at 90 miles an hour.<\/p>\n

But I’m alive and well. I’m sitting in the comfort of my comfortable air-conditioned home just a couple of hours after this incident. But I can’t stop thinking — yet again — about mortality. I can’t help but think that such brushes with mortality make me feel a stronger sense of urgency about the things which matter to me in life.<\/p>\n

It would be a tragedy if I died tonight, not because the loss would hurt anybody, but because I would have wasted my life. That’s a very arbitrary evaluation, but it’s one I instinctively feel strongly. If I died tonight, I wouldn’t leave behind anyone who loves me. I wouldn’t leave behind anything which I’d done which would matter in the future. I wouldn’t leave behind much of anything that would be of value to anyone.<\/p>\n

And that’s why I want to love someone who loves me back — someone who will feel changed by having been loved by me.<\/p>\n

That’s why I want to have children who I raise in love and empathy, prepared for the role of helping to change the world bit by bit.<\/p>\n

That’s why I want to make art that I can leave behind — something which will not only be loved but which will also preach the Good News as I understand it.<\/p>\n

None of this is new. You’ve heard it before. I’ve felt it before. But the realization that I could just as easily be laying cold and dead in a morgue right now makes it very clear to me that I have to change my approach if I’m going to find a way to achieve what I want in life.<\/p>\n

Whether I like it or not, death is always waiting. Tonight was just a little tease. My life isn’t over. Not yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The technician looked at me as though he had seen a ghost. “You almost got yourself killed,” he said quietly. I was almost back to my suburb Friday evening when I had a blowout on I-20 east of Birmingham. I was going faster than the law prefers when I heard a sudden noise that I Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[242,352,410,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-25552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-death","8":"tag-life","9":"tag-mortality","10":"tag-psychology","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-6E8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25552"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25561,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25552\/revisions\/25561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}