I will soon turn 23 and I have already been through some life threatening situations that massively changed my perception of life. The last has occurred several days ago and even though it wasn’t as influencing as the rest of them concerning perception of life, it had reminded me of all the previous events, therefore I decided to share my story.
The first event happened when I was like 15. Our family went skiing every single year to Alps. I always was this speedy skier, not satisfied with anything but perfect slope with no people going as fast as I could handle…and I could handle a lot.
So there was this slope right next to a cliff. I was alone there so I was enjoying myself carving from one side to the other totally uninterrupted. The surface was pretty icy, but it was nothing my skies wouldn’t handle. When I was carving to the left towards the cliff I slipped. I was going full speed uncontrollably towards an icy step like half a meter big that was a fringe of the slope. All I managed to do was stand up, but I never managed to turn and I hit the step directly.
And down I went from the cliff. I did at least one flip, but all I was concentrating on was not to land head-first, because my spine would probably break. I knew I wanted to land on my ass and that I managed to do so and then there was a blackout. The next thing I remember is being somewhere in the middle of nowhere with my skies and stick randomly lying all over the place. I was checking whether all vital systems of my body were working and luckily they were. I chilled there for a bit in complete euphoria. Then the time to climb back came. It took me good few hours but I managed to do so. Along the way I was passing several stones that would have instantly killed me if I hit them, but somehow, I missed them all on my journey to the bottom. When I re-joined my family I just told them that I was skiing all the time. I didn’t see any beneficial outcome from sharing what had actually happened.
2 years later I was going to visit my friends place with another buddy of mine before my English lesson. We bought few beers exited a bus and had to cross a road. The zebra crossing was like 15-30 meters from a T-shaped crossroad. The problem was that there was a building blocking all the vision the cars could have. For this very reason there was this mirror everyone surely knows. Suddenly there was a siren and a police van was going its full speed intending to go straight. At the same time a car was entering the crossroad, going like 5-10 km/h. The driver clearly heard the siren but didn’t go from where it comes. He though certainly didn’t expect that the police van would be crossing the crossroads at the exact same moment when the tip of the car entered it to. The reaction of the police man was pretty epic and he acutely turned left hitting the tip of the car with the van’s back. The crash blasted off the front of the car and the police van itself started uncontrollably rotating towards the zebra crossing that we were using at that moment.
The guy in the front started running immediately and so did I in the back. My friend in the middle froze while the van was rolling towards him in full speed. I pushed him from behind, which helped him to start moving. At the very end I jumped trying to avoid the rolling car. Luckily I did manage to do so. The only thing that hit me was torn off mirror from the police van. Surprisingly no one was injured. Oh and no one cared about bunch of youngsters carrying beers too. Was best beer of my life anyway...
And now few days back I was driving my scooter on a countryside. There was this curve that I always wanted to pass in full speed – kind of a race mode. There was a long straight line just behind the curve and another curve beforehand. I had all the time I needed to check that there are no cars around so I went into this race mode. The scooter is the slowest one you can get, but this was kind of a downhill so I went like 80 km/h. When I tried to lean so I could ride through it the undercarriage started to scrape the road. At that moment I knew that if I’ll try to force it and lean more I’m going to slip and If I’ll stay like this I’m never going to make it and will fly off the road. I decided to slow down as much as possible, but since I was going full speed through a curve I only managed to slow for like 10km/h I’d say. Then when I was at the edge of the road I decided to abandon the ship. I jumped off the scooter to the back into the roll (something I’ve seen members of army doing when jumping off the train). Since my helmet was shitty I tried my best not to hit the ground with my head. All the years of falling on the skis had paid off. I went through the situation when I had a split second to controllably fall not to break anything countless times…This was just bit more painful. I saved my skin. Paradox was that a bit of skin on my right arm was the only thing I lost:P. Oh yea and scooter is not in a ridable state anymore:D.
I have registered major changes about my perception of life because of those events. I wouldn’t go as far to say that I’m indifferent to all the shit that is happening around me, but I’m certainly not moved by it. A lot of people I know are interpreting such a stuff by some spiritual shenanigans. I on the other hand am just happier to live my life. I’m not moved by any news about anyone dying anymore, because this is just the way it is. People are stupid, kill themselves, kill others and stuff. If I witnessed someone in my position not being able to dodge any of those situations stated above I would probably just say – well biology worked again. Surviving of those events is though no absolution from other similar events. For all I know I might not be able to dodge the next one – occurring tomorrow. One just have to expect EVERYTHING in this world. No one is EVER safe. My way of life is being as happy as I can for as long as I can sustain the state. So far so good:). And what about you? Have you dodged any life threating situation and showed biology for that time that you do not intent to leave this place untimely? Let me know!
