The human mind is an amazing thing. No matter how much we know something is the truth, we still have the capacity for denial.
I should know as well as anyone how quickly and randomly bad things can happen. I am a physician. True, I am an ophthalmologist and don’t come into contact with many life or death issues anymore, but I have worked in ERs and ICUs. I have seen my share of death and heartbroken relatives. And of course there is Eric. Nothing could have been more shocking and unexpected than that.
Still, our minds protect us and tell us we are in this inviolable bubble. For example, I know that being pregnant I need to be careful on long car trips and make sure I get out and stretch my legs every couple of hours to try and avoid a clot forming. Still, my first impulse is to ignore the messages from my bladder and see how far we can get before stopping. Dumb.
There are some things we can alter, such as ignoring that first impulse and making sure the leg muscles get worked. Then there is fate--all of the things that can’t be foreseen and therefore can’t be prevented.
A coworker recently told me the story of a friend of a friend who was involved in a car accident. This woman and her husband had tried for years to become pregnant and were finally successful. She was in her eighth month. They were leaving a party at a friend’s house and someone else was going way too fast around a curve and hit them head on. The baby died immediately. Mom and Dad were injured, but have survived. There is nothing they could have done to avoid that, but I’m sure they have asked themselves repeatedly what would have happened had they left 5 minutes earlier or 5 minutes later.
I guess that is why we live with such capacity for denial. So we aren’t paralyzed into inaction because of all the things we can’t avoid. Still, I have to actively remember that bad things can happen and that I should take all the precautions I can. You’d think, after Eric, it wouldn’t be that hard.
A thought-provoking post, Liz. And, hard to grasp that there are some things that we cannot predict or avoid.
ReplyDeleteI just finished "Protecting the Gift" by Gavin de Becker, the same guy who wrote The Gift of Fear. I think it's a powerful book for parents and if you have time or the interest, you might find one thing about it useful: a parent/woman can be empowered by understanding her intuition and knowing about pre-incident indicators that tip us off about things that are not in the category of "random" or statistically unlikely.
I am very prone to worry--and as you mention--worry prevents us from taking action--and this book was one of the few that helped me move past it in some areas. It's an outstanding book and an interesting one to read.
Thinking of you this Thanksgiving. I know it's the first without Eric at the table.