But today I want to go back a few weeks to a Wednesday when I was driving on the 520 and got in a car accident. Thankfully, it was not really that serious—well, not serious to me and my body but pretty serious to the car that I don’t have anymore. And really, one of the things I learned is that even an accident that “isn’t that serious” can leave a person pretty shaken up and discombobulated.
But one of the most interesting observations that I made was that one of my identities is Someone who Has Never Been in a Car Accident. It felt strange and sort of like a loss to give that up. Now I am Someone who Has Been in a Car Accident. I contemplated that for a couple days before I realized that it was much bigger than that. More than the loss of identity, it was being faced with my own vulnerability. As long as I was Someone who Has Never Been in a Car Accident, I could imagine that it would never happen, that I could drive around in this fast, dangerous machine and never get hurt. And now that delusion has been dashed.
It is sort of the opposite of (but the same as) a story that I love to tell about one of my nephews playing basketball (when he was seven, which is very cute). It was the last game of the season and the only one I had been able to get to, so my mom and sister were giving me a synopsis, which was that Harrison had pretty much spent the whole season trying not to get the ball and when he got it, to get rid of it as soon as possible because he didn’t think he could make a basket. In this last game, some of their stronger players weren’t there, so he didn’t have as much of a choice and, lo and behold, he did end up making a basket. Well, he was like a completely different kid for the rest of the game—getting the ball, trying to get down court, he even ended up making another basket. The shift was so clear to me: he went from being Someone who Couldn’t Make a Basket to Someone who Could Make a Basket in that one instant. We just need to experience something once to know it is possible.
So now I know that me being in a car accident is possible. And while that is scary, it also helps me remember that anything is possible. And that given the choice, I want to be open to possibility, which means moving toward life rather than away from it, even though there is a risk I could get hurt. I guess it may all sound a little hallmark card or something, but acknowledging these sorts of insights when we have an actual experience of them (vs. them just being a nice idea) seems important in really letting them sink in.
How does this fit with yoga? Well, I can only get something out of this experience through self-inquiry (svadhyaya), ego (ahankara) is involved, and it certainly seems to be related to abhinivesha (fear of death). But really what comes to mind is something I was saying this weekend at a training, which doesn’t have a word that goes with it, but is expressed with a gesture. I was saying, “Yoga goes like this” (imagine me starting with my hands together and then pointing them diagonally out and moving them forward, out and away) “not like this” (imagine me starting with my hands apart and then pointing them diagonally in and moving them forward, in and together). Yoga helps us be more expansive instead of contracted. Sounds good to me.
