He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.

— Nietzche

It was like a Giant Slalom course.

Careening back and forth, I deftly avoided the holes and the heaves in the road.

“I think I’d take it a little slower,” Dave said from the back seat.

I smiled at him through the rear view mirror and pressed the accelerator a bit harder.

It was late winter and Jefferson Notch Road was a combination of ice and snow and rutted rock. Perfect for my all-wheel multi-purpose trusty reliable Outback.

Until I saw the branch a bit too late.  And swerved.  And caught the icy patch. And landed in the ditch.

Ten miles from the main road without cell phone coverage.  Late in the day. Without much prospect of another passing car.

“Landed” would be a euphemism for impaled, upended, kinda screwed.

As September looms, I am aware of my propensity to careen.  The lazy days of summer seem to nurture a sense of healthy aimlessness in me.  But as they give way to the fall, there is a return to schedule and routine.  Greater portent. Obligations and Expectations and Commitments.

The days packed full, one ebbing into another.  Labor Day becomes Columbus Day becomes the Holidays.  Life lived in a particle accelerator.  Full and satisfying.  But also stupefying in its blur.

Lived without a lot of presence. Or much appreciation for the moments granted.

Buddhists speak of our precious human existence.  Of our unique potential for enlightenment. But how much of it we miss by failing to show up. By failing to hold in awareness all that we have been given. One moment careening into another, evaporating like drops of water on a hot griddle.

My most important summer read was Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.  I was so moved by Frankl’s capacity to be in touch with beauty and dignity and purpose even in the most horrific of circumstances.  How is it that he could appreciate the watery soup and morsel of bread when in the comfort of my suburban banality it is a chore to remember the sauteed shrimp I had last night? How is it that he could find goodness and decency in the prison guards who persecuted him when I sometimes struggle to find such qualities even in those I love? How is it that he could find hope as his friends were led to the crematorium when I find bleakness in something as transitory as the failing daylight? How is it that he could marvel in a sunset through the barbed wire when sometimes I cannot even remember to look?

Frankl reminds us of our power to chose.  In every moment.  To chose: to cherish every fragment of time. To appreciate every opportunity. To hold dear to beauty.

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

I was brought up short this week by a quote passed on by Tony Robbins: “Somebody is in the hospital begging God for the opportunity you have right now. Step into your moment.”

It is so easy to step over the moment, through the moment, under the moment; but never to dwell in the moment.  Failing to recognize the richness of the opportunities that stretch before us. Right here, right now. Forgetting to appreciate the countless blessings that our precious human existence brings.

Even as I mourn the loss of a beloved pet and grapple with the looming tuition bills and wrestle with the countless commitments of a new season, I want to chose to see beauty. To careen less. To avoid the ditch.

Dave was right.  It would be better to take it a little slower.

It is we ourselves who must answer the questions that life asks of us, and to these questions we can respond only by being responsible for our existence.

— Victor Frankl