The Meaning of Life.... No, not the Monty Python movie....The actual meaning....Well, sort of.....

So, yesterday was interesting. It was one of those days where, at the end of it all, you sit back and say...(plug your ears/close your eyes if you prefer PG rated stuff...) "Holy Shit!" I believe those were my exact words when my head finally hit my pillow sometime very late last night. It was a day filled with so many eye opening and life changing occurrences for me and those close to me that I just could not wrap my head around all of it. Some of the "occurrences" actually took place on another day, well actually just one of the "occurrences," but I just heard about it yesterday. I just noticed that I put quotes around "occurrences." I have done it every time I wrote the word "occurrences." Can't you just see me saying the word "occurrences" and making those little quote signs in the air as I say it? What a complete dork..... I need help.... Okay, back on task. It just seemed to me that yesterday was a day for realization. A day for contemplation. A day for discovery. A day to remember. There were 3 specific instances that I am going to be focusing on. There is no chronological order or order of importance to them. In one way or another, they all have a great deal of importance. Therefore, there is no one event more important than the other. Since yesterday ended up blending itself all together, I have eliminated the need for any kind of chronological order. Okay, that being said, let's go.... I got to talk to a very good friend of mine yesterday. He recently went to Las Vegas to join friends in celebrating a milestone birthday of a close friend of his. It was a surprise party. We all know that these things usually do not work out. Someone always spoils it or the surprise-ee always figures it out. Apparently, neither of these things happened in this case. In fact, it went off like a charm. The birthday boy was completely surprised. Everyone had a great time. There were a lot of tears as this party included many people the birthday boy had not seen in years. Including my friend. It was truly a magical moment. A treasured moment. A moment that I may never have heard about. I almost missed out on a chance to hear about this incredible time. My friend almost didn't make it to the party. He almost died on the way to Vegas. He is VERY lucky to be alive. You have to know this friend of mine to understand why his near death experience is no surprise to me. He is a hard-working man. A blue-collar, union-member, NASCAR- loving, no-bullshit, kinda guy. When he gets an idea in his head, he goes with it and rarely deviates. He had it in his head that he was going to drive to Vegas when the traffic was light and the sun was down so he was going to leave late and get in there early. Well, this approach is okay if you can stay awake driving at night. I, myself, cannot. He says that he can. He thought he could. As he was cruising the highway at 80 miles per hour his body decided to show him that he, in fact, could not. He nodded. Just for a split second. When he looked up, he was headed off the road and into a guardrail. Something caused him to gently pull the steering wheel to the right allowing him to avoid the guardrail which would have meant instant death. He avoided the guardrail only to go right off of the road and continue forward through the desert landscape on the side of the highway. Hitting nothing, he was able to navigate back on to the highway and regain control of the car. So, between missing the guardrail and not hitting anything while off-roading in his Acura sports car I would say that he was touched by some super-natural power that determined it was not his time. This also happened to my very good friend Connie's son, Trevor. Trevor was not in a car rather, he was hit by one. He was riding his bike home from school when he was hit by a car. Something he probably does 5 days a week for the entire school year. Same route. Same everything. It just so happened that on that day, some young girl (that goes to his school) with a history of driving problems, decided not to pay close enough attention to what she was doing. She hit Trevor. Hard. On his way to the hospital, he wanted to make sure the driver knew that he was okay. I was offered a position as a part-time instructor for a nationally recognized Bartending Academy. That's right. No transition. I just put that out there. It was the third incident that happened and I did not know how to tie it in until after the other stories were told but I didn't know how to segue into it so I just said it. Get over it. Okay, what do these 3 things have in common? What great "secret of life" did I discover as a result of these three "occurrences?" Life is not a toy. It cannot be played with. Life is an object d'art in your Grandma's living room that looks like a toy. You try to play with it. Somehow, as soon as you touch it, a cosmic wave gets sent straight to the nearest adult's spine and they rush into the room to quickly slap you across the face and remove the object from your grasp. That is life. When we think things are okay, when we think we can just cruise along, when we have given up hope, it slaps us. Hard across the face. It makes us realize how precious it is. How important it is. How important we are. It shows us that when we look and don't touch, it will reward us with it's beauty. If we are selfish, and we try to play, it will remind us. It always does.