We each have a life story and we’re usually pretty wrapped up in it. We might be happy or sad, things might be going our way or going against us. But regardless, we’re generally involved with one basic effort – we’re trying our best to make things turn out the way we want them to be.

          And we’ve been doing this since we first learned how to use our will power. Now, as we grow older, the details change. What we care about at age six is quite a bit different from what we care about at age 16. But still, we try our best to make things go our way, because that’s how we like it. We like to get what we want and when we don’t, it can be pretty painful.  

          Something else is always happening as well – we’re breathing. No matter what’s going on for us, whether we like it or not, we’re still always breathing. No matter the circumstances, this mysterious power keeps giving us life as we travel down the winding road from one now to the next.

          Of course, most of us don’t pay much attention to it, and given our training, why should we? Your breath doesn’t cost you anything so we don’t see any value to it.  It runs on automatic so you don’t have to do a thing to get it. It’s not entertaining and you can’t sell it or make any money off it, so why bother? Sounds a little crass, but this is the viewpoint we inherited from our culture, which on one level is just a glorified version of the basic law of the jungle.   

          Yet, every once in a while, something happens, and even if it’s just for a moment, we suddenly realize the deeper truth that the value of our life itself far outweighs whatever may be happening to us.

          About twenty-five years ago, this understanding unexpectedly made itself plain to me as I was having dinner with an old friend.  I had met him at school and we were close until we were around 15, when his family moved to another city. Now importantly, he was an exceptional athlete. He grew up to be about six-one, had a muscular build and was tremendously coordinated. In his senior year in high school, he was named to the first-string all-city teams in baseball, basketball and football, which is pretty rare. 

          And he was a great guy as well, but he also had quite a temper and under the wrong circumstances, he could get very angry very quickly. Deep down, he was pretty sensitive and if his feelings got hurt, his primary defense was to get mad fast. But still, he was a really good guy and a really good friend.

          Anyway, we lost touch when he moved and I hadn’t seen him for many years, until one day in the early 90s, out of the clear blue sky, he gave me a call. He happened to be in town and invited me to join him for dinner. We met at a nice restaurant and had a great time catching up with each other. Then, toward the end of the meal, he casually told me this story, which was anything but casual.

          It was the mid-70s, right after college. He was about to get his master’s degree at a university located in the country ski regions of New England. He was living with his girlfriend. They had been living together for more than a year and were starting to talk about the idea of getting engaged.

          He had recently submitted his master’s thesis and been working non-stop, getting ready to defend it before the committee that would decide if he had qualified for his degree.

It was the night before his scheduled appearance before the committee and after dinner, with no warning, his girlfriend abruptly told him that she had been having an affair with his best friend for about six months. They’d been carrying on behind his back, and now she wasn’t sure who she really wanted to be with. Obviously they had to ice the idea of getting engaged, at least for now.

Of course, Barry, (which isn’t his real name) immediately hit the ceiling and they got into a vicious fight that quickly escalated into the most intense one he had ever been in. And that’s saying something because he had been in some major ones.

 They fought all night long, shouting and screaming at each other as every hurt that had gone on between them came up and added fuel to the fire. Finally, at 8 o’clock the next morning, with absolutely no sleep, he got into his VW van and drove off to his appointment at school. He was determined to mount his defense and get his degree. No matter what, nothing was going to take that away from him.   

As he drove along the weaving mountain road, he was in a complete rage, absolutely out of his mind. How could she have done this to him? They had been so close for so long and it had seemed like the ideal relationship. And what about his so-called friend? He was going to ask this guy to be the best man at his wedding and now he finds out that he had been secretly stabbing him in the back the whole time. The heartless betrayal was just too much.  And to top it all off, why did she have to hit him over the head with it on the very night before the most important day of his life. She couldn’t have waited one more night?  

He told me that as he drove along, he had never experienced such rage in his life. He tried to pull himself together, but it just kept getting worse and worse. Then suddenly, he felt a strange, sinking feeling in his stomach, like he was falling.

Alarmed, he looked out the window and realized to his horror, that he had driven off the road. For a split second, the van seemed to hang in mid-air and then oddly, he lost his sense of hearing and everything went silent. Then, seemingly in slow motion, the bus started to fall down, hitting the mountainside and rolling over several times before finally coming to rest, upside down at the bottom of a deep ravine.

Barry thinks he must have gone unconscious and had no idea of how long it was before he came to. In extreme pain, he was able to pry himself out of the mangled bus and crawl out. A bloody mess, with both legs severely broken, he rested on the ground for a few moments.  

Then, powered by pure instinct and guts, and using just his forearms, he crawled on his stomach over a mile and a half up the rocky ravine, which was covered with thorn bushes. Finally, he made it up to the side of the road, where battered and bleeding, he passed out.

Someone noticed him and called the police which rushed him to the hospital. Along with all his other injuries, the doctors quickly realized that he had suffered some serious head trauma as well. It was obvious that if he hadn’t been in such great shape, he would have surely died at the bottom of the ravine.

He paused with the story as the waiter came over to take our dessert order. We considered a few options but the Key Lime pie was the renowned specialty of the house, so we ordered it with some coffee. Thinking about sweets gave us a much-needed break from the incredibly intense tale. We chatted a little bit about some long-lost friends and had a few laughs about old times. Then with a serious look returning to his face, Barry got back to the story.

He said there were two major insights that he had learned from the experience that had completely changed his life and he really wanted to share them with me.     

The first one was that as he drove along that morning, he had never been more furious in his life. For over twelve hours, he had been completely consumed by the horrible betrayal he was suffering. But the second he realized that he had driven off the cliff and was coming face to face with death, the whole thing vanished from his mind instantaneously. The only thing that mattered now was to stay alive.

“Even though looking back on it, it makes perfect sense,” he said. “That immediate change in priority really showed me something. And in its aftermath my whole outlook got transformed and I was never really the same again.”

The pie and coffee came. We both had a few bites and it was even better than its reputation. “So, look,” he said to me, somewhat intently.  “This is the thing. No matter what happens to you, for good or for bad, understand that nothing even comes close to the importance of being alive. And let me tell you something, there is a power within you don’t really know, but it will fight for your existence much more intensely than you can imagine.”

  Then he added another fascinating twist to the story. He said he had remained unconscious for a few days before he woke up in intensive care. And it was a few days after that before he started to even remember what had happened. Eventually it all came back to him and in complete detail. But amazingly, even though he remembered every bit of it, he had absolutely no emotions about any of it at all. He had the memories but he had no feelings about them whatsoever. Blank.

He later learned that in some brain injury cases, like a major concussion or a serious stroke, this kind of thing is not uncommon. And even though it can be temporary, for him, the emotions never came back. They were gone for good. It was like the events had happened to somebody else and the whole thing started to fade from his mind, like a dream does, once you’re awake.

His old girlfriend and his old best friend were like strangers to him and he let them go and moved on. But the whole thing really moved him deeply and eventually, he got into some personal growth and meditation, which made sense. Afterall, it was the mid-70s and it seemed like our whole generation was on one big search for truth. 

“It’s amazing how attached we get to what’s going on with us,” Barry said. “And even though it seems so real, it can vanish is a flash. Makes you wonder about all the stuff that runs through our heads all day long. So much thought. But you know what, maybe this whole life isn’t what we think it is. I could never really put what I mean into words, but I think you get the point.”

He was certainly right about that. This was all pretty deep stuff, and as you can imagine, hearing the story directly from him really drove it home. I was completely blown-out.

He finished his pie and broke into a big smile and said, “Oh, man, that really was great!”

As I looked at him, I realized that he had basically turned out as normal as pie, happily married with two great kids and a nice home in the suburbs. He suddenly made some silly inside joke that we had in sixth grade and we both got a kick out of it. We hung around for another half hour or so, just laughing and having fun.  

His story has stayed with me over all these years and I often ponder those profound observations of his. But what an intense horror show, full of such bitter physical and psychological pain!

As I try to absorb its meaning, I always feel grateful for what a story like that can do for you. You can learn its significant life lessons without having to actually live through all the pain involved. With the right focus, you get the chance to gain the wisdom, but leave the trauma. Wow! What a deal! Personally, I’d take that any time I could get it.