Sometimes days don't start well. Then they get worse. Then you get ambushed by the realisation that how you look at the world is far too me-centered. Last Friday was an example of a day that started as a catena of inconveniences, and ended with the discovery that I'm not the most important person on the planet, or the country, or on the road. The cliché "wake up call" has become a cliché because it is overused and overstated, usually. But last Friday was a personal wake-up call, loud, piercing and for the past several days persisting in the memory.
Here's how the day went. It had been snowing, and the 2 or 3 inches of snow had melted and refrozen twice, and it was snowing again. It was the day for the Community Cafe in Montrose, and if the weather was ok, and the roads passable I'd do the 80 mile round trip. The first challenge was clearing the ice and snow from the car, without landing on my back. The road was wet ice and any purchase on the ice scraper channelled the energy to the legs which went sliding without permission in various directions. But I got it done. No way to drive the car up the slight incline. Only way to go was reverse very carefully to the junction behind, then take the car out the bottom way onto roads that were at least driveable. Managed all that and on my way.
Took the road through the city as the roads likely to be clearer. They were, but not much. By the time I got to Stonehaven, with about 22 miles to go I knew I'd need petrol in Montrose. At Inverbervie, with about 12 miles to go I came up behind several cars held back by a huge tractor and even huger dung spreader! No safe place to pass so 30 miles an hour all the way to Montrose. Except there had been an accident across the bridge on the north entry to the town and the traffic was queued back. No alternative route so just wait....and wait. Anyway, eventually got to the cafe, late but still plenty scones and coffee and folk.
On the way out, the traffic still tailing back from the bridge but eventually on our way home. A mile or two out of Montrose my petrol light came on! Oh sh...urely not! It said I had 24 miles to go - easily enough to get to Stonehaven. But the needle fell quickly and relentlessly so I'd need petrol in Inverbervie. Economic driving got me to Bervie - no petrol station! Four miles of petrol left, the clever wee digital thing warned and beeped. Too far to Stonehaven. Embarrassed, but self-justifying, I phoned the AA. Very helpful, they'd be with me in an hour. And he was - but he had no spare petrol so he went on up to Stonehaven and back for a gallon of petrol. Good, that would be easily enough fuel to get us to Westhill. Well, you'd think.
At Maryculter there's a diversion. A long diversion. Only way across the river, and the shortest way, is at Banchory. Petrol going down again, and no petrol stations on the south Deeside road till Banchory. But I make it, with dregs to spare, fillup with petrol and without any other delays get home by 4.30, only 3 hours late. Skating rink roads, outsized dung spreaders, grid locked traffic, self-inflicted petrol crisis, unplanned long diversion - plenty to complain about.
The wake-up call came within an hour of being home. Looking at the local news online, the explanation for the diversion was the death of a school bus driver in a three vehicle accident at Maryculter bridge. At that point the difficulties, problems, frustrations, annoyances or inconveniences of my own day, which had seemed to suggest some cosmic conspiracy aimed specifically at me, were put in perspective. And my self-absorbed inner rants reduced to ridiculous childishness, a mere tantrum in the face of a tragedy that was for very real.
Because this good man, a bus driver was doing his job getting young people to school. And the school they were going to was near Montrose, down the road I had just travelled. And a day that started normally, ended in tragedy. The papers tell us the driver's name, and that he was larger than life, well liked and well thought of by his young passengers. I grieve his death, and pray for his family, and those affected by an accident with widening ripples of sadness into the community.
John Donne wrote, " No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
I am not an island, a self-sufficient or self-important individual. None of us are. All the time life reminds us that we diminish ourselves the more selfish we become. In all the frustration and inner resentment at having had a hard day, I was unaware that elsewhere, a fellow human being, someone who lives in the same city, had been killed while doing his job, and I was annoyed at a mere diversion, a slow moving pungent smelling dung spreader and my own motoring incompetence.
So I pray for two things. A sense of proportion about what does and what doesn't matter in the living of our lives, which can be hard, tough, challenging or whatever. And secondly, for more compassion, patience, and perceptiveness about what is going on around me. In other words, having had a wake-up call, to waken up to life and to the people who share it with me, known and unknown. And to love life, and love people, and learn again to live with all the inconveniences and compromises that are part of the deal in any worthwhile community. Because "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."
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