Mortality

Life can be short. On hindsight, I should have wondered this myself when hurtling through treacherous mountain paths on a small metal box on wheels and sugar, driven by a complete stranger, with a crew of 6-7 in the back half of the box. The view from a sheer cliff looks really pretty, so long as one isn't angling one's head down too much.

Another in/accident this week had, again on hindsight, the potential to change my life for the rest of its duration; however long or short that might be. If that van had come at higher speed, at a more acute angle, if those bushes weren't there, if the car wasn't on the slowest lane; more things than the car could have been damaged. The impact of that van would have had more than one shockwave. Luckily, my life wasn't changed all that much.

The consideration of the "what if" disturbs me. The privilege to go on living and the possibility of it being taken away all of a sudden hasn't entered conscious thought for quite some time already, if not ever. That I haven't thought of it all this time when life hung as fragile as it always does also disturbs me further, and more importantly, my own attitude toward being a mortal being. The sudden appreciation that one isn't invincible as one would like to be. Oh dear. Though we in relatively peaceful Singapore are less likely to be shot, blown into small pieces, get lynched, starve, freeze or dehydrate than other less fortunate people in the world, that's never stopped fate from being creative or being pure cruel.

I guess I don't have much of a right to assume much more since this experience wasn't anywhere near tragic or traumatic. I'll get my chance later.