69 Days

Why perception matters to how we choose to live our lives

Most days anymore since the accident I wake up in a good mood. I am grateful for everything I have and don’t worry too much about what I don’t. I focus on achieving my goals.

On May 30th, I was wrapping up a training ride prior to a race. I had just come off the gravel route I have ridden so many times and found myself back on fresh tarmac. County Road 1120 East. Not a soul in sight.

I got hit so hard from behind, the impact broke and fractured over 10 bones along with a lot of other damage. The impact also stopped my heart for nearly 2 minutes.

Whether an accident or on purpose, the person in the large vehicle who hit me knew exactly what they had done, then decided to drive away. But that person’s decision and what will come from that (Karma) is between them and the Universe, not me.

In the ER, the attending Orthopedic told me I was “way outside of his team’s pay grade”, and I was going to be transferred to a Level 1 Trauma Center in downtown Indianapolis to ensure the necessary life support equipment, resources and physicians were available. Apparently, given my condition, that wasn’t just being prudent, it was essential.

None of that bodes well.

But I walked into the ER, having been driven there by my wife who arrived at the crash site, alerted to my location and the event by the GARMIN headset on my bike. How this occurred and why I made the decision is another story, right or wrong. Still I got out of the vehicle and walked into the Emergency Room.

How are both things possible? Walking in and then a few hours later being told you require life support resources?

The world is full of things we don’t understand. The threads that connect all of us, the energies which surround us, shape and influence us are there. They are real. The vast majority of us, me included, just don’t register their existence.

Four days post accident and one and a half days after being released from the Trauma Center, I was up and functioning and went back to work. No pain meds. Seriously.

A week later I was walking almost 5 miles every other day and climbing stairs at home daily. That week brought 2,658 stairs. I counted.

At 20 days I began leg isometrics. Wall squats. At 40 days I was holding these for over 15 minutes while watching video podcasts on the TV. Trainer Road’s ‘Ask a Coach’, Huberman Lab, Rich Roll, Kintsugi (Michael O’Brien), Hidden Brain, DOAC , Making Sense, Daily Stoic and Modern Wisdom to name some of them. I consumed a lot of content in the evenings during the last 69 days.

At 50 days I was back on my bike. Sort of. I was on a trainer in the basement. Hard, humbling and awkward, having to ride on a stationary bike sitting bolt upright, no handed (the bike is stable on a resistance trainer connected to a TV and a riding application called Zwift). Still, it was progress.

I don’t feel sorry for myself. I don’t see myself a victim. I don’t regret what happened. This was how the path was laid out. When you are out hiking and you encounter a stream cutting across the trail, you don’t stop and cry. You don’t curse it. You can either turn around and go back the way you came or you can suck it up, get your feet wet and cross it.

So at 69 days, I am doing pretty damn well now that I think about it.

There is just one problem. I am not listening to my own advice and today isn’t the best of days. I feel unsettled and on edge.

So, I decided to set the article I am almost done with aside, and write this one. Maybe if you are reading this, you can relate to feeling unsettled, frustrated or a bit out of place.

So what’s wrong? What’s the issue?

Since the accident, my perception and outlook on the world around me and many of the people in it, has shifted. Not changed…Shifted. There is a difference.

I have come to recognize that a large segment of our population is on autopilot, full on. Their experiences not thought about too deeply, or witnessed by their conscious mind. Moving from one meeting or thing to another. On defense. Sleepwalking. No thoughts or recognition of anything beyond what they crash into and run through on a daily basis. Except perhaps being frustrated about…something.

Any of this sound familiar?

As Pink Floyd once sang about, “living in quiet desperation is the English way.” I didn’t give it too much thought myself for a long time either. Until things changed.

Right now, things are quiet. No significant drama at work or at home. Like the quiet and still air before a thunderstorm rolls in. Events are unfolding and falling into place on agains their own time rather than mine. I am a hurry up, let’s go guy, so learning this has been a challenge. But an important lesson in ceding control I have always believed I had but really don’t, and patience.

Looking back at what happened to me, I am alive and well and very much on the road to exceeding my previous 100%. Yet, I am not going back to who or what I was before the accident. I am headed somewhere else. This is place I can’t yet identify and frankly that’s unnerving. Therein lies the issue. Uncertainty.

I am going to be candid. I threaded a very narrow needle. I should be dead or paralyzed. Given the carnage, the fact I am where I am at 69 days, is a gift. I am here for a reason. Otherwise I wouldn’t be or my recovery would be more ‘normal’ for someone in their 50’s.

The presence of frustration is unnerving. I recognize how I experience the world has shifted and I see a bit more than I used to. So why is this feeling present now?

I have actively asked myself this question and here is the answer that has come. Being on autopilot is living a rinse and repeat life. The frustration is a symptom of something being off. Frustration is telling you to PAY ATTENTION.

News flash, we are not here in this life to 'rinse and repeat.’ and fear is a toothless tiger.

However, frustration is a tool. Frustration is an alarm clock telling you to wake up. Look for opportunities to evolve and change. Big or small. Right now, I am recycling my frustration into other forms of productive energy. And energy creates outcomes.

At the beginning of this piece, I indicated I wasn’t following my own advice. I was allowing uncertainty and frustration to get the best of me because my experience of the world in which I live was evolving. The people, places and things as well as perceptions.

Still, this morning, I was not happy with frustration being here.

As I write this, I remembered that I can either sit back and be frustrated. And, like so many, do absolutely nothing about it. Or I can be an active participant in co-creating what can and is unfolding now. Things are going to unfold. Change is the only constant and I can either sit in the back and see where it goes, being a victim of circumstance or I have to choose to recognize this and then choose to do something with it. Even if that something is small.

And it now dawns on me that how I chose to view this and what I am choosing to do with it is EXACTLY the same thing as what I have chosen to do in my accident recovery.

The quiet time right now I am experiencing is something that is by design. No different than day 3 in the trauma center when I asked for some paper to write the framework of ‘A Hit and Run is No Big Deal’.

I just needed to recognize this. It is easy to get lost in the fog and miss the lesson or the prompt. I honestly missed this correlation entirely until I wrote this. Which, is probably why I was compelled to write it.

There. I am back to following my own advice. Thank you for letting me rant.

Perhaps you have some of the same feelings and thoughts of uncertainty or frustration Perhaps you have wondered why certain things have ,or are happening. Or you perceive them to not be happening.

Remember this. No matter what you believe or have been told, you are on this earth for reasons you may not yet understand or appreciate, and it is not to rinse and repeat yesterday. You can choose to find or create your higher purpose, find your joy and your way or you can choose to let it be set for you and miss the mark entirely. Rinse and repeat. It is your call.

So actively but patiently work with the Universe or your higher power to wake up and figure that shit out and look for what’s presented to you. It’s hidden right there, in plain sight.

If you want to reach out and talk about it, I am here and would welcome the conversation. Just drop me a message.