When­ever I look at a build­ing from ground level I some­times envi­sion myself inside the build­ing, look­ing out and see­ing every­thing in per­spec­tive from that view.

In life, some­times it’s best to see things from dif­fer­ent angles and pos­si­bly dif­fer­ent points of view instead of just focus­ing on what we gen­er­ally accept as 2-dimensional.

When a drunk dri­ver, in the mid­dle of a mid­night run, acci­dently hits a child on the side of the road, rarely do we under­stand from his or her per­spec­tive what they are going through after the tragedy has taken place. Instead we typ­i­cally are more con­cerned with the child, which isn’t to say that the child shouldn’t be the main focus, it’s just that as human beings we gen­er­ally lock our­selves into 2-dimensional viewpoints.

We aren’t con­cerned with the fact that the indi­vid­ual who made this mis­take, prior to the inci­dent, lived a life them­selves. Sta­tis­tics might reveal that this per­son, prior to the occurence, might’ve never had a bad record but none of that mat­ters when rage and emo­tion takes over. There are no gray areas, just the stark real­ity of black and white, jus­tice prevailing.

I’ve often won­dered that if we were able to see from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive dur­ing cer­tain events in our life­times that we might’ve seen things more clearly, not nec­es­sar­ily padding our reac­tions, but gain­ing a greater per­spec­tive on the domino effects of cause and effect.

Under­stand­ing that we as human beings make choices in our every­day lives that will change our paths fur­ther down the road, for bet­ter or worse. When that times comes, when we least expect it, know­ing that some­one out there might see not only from their per­spec­tive but from your own, could lead to less stress and a bet­ter under­stand­ing of life.

It’s the phone call that every par­ent dreads; that their child has been injured. Ear­lier this week my brother-in-law called me at work to inform me that my daugh­ter Zoe had an acci­dent. Appar­ently after grab­bing some­thing from the base­ment, my brother-in-law for­got to close the door tightly. Moments later my daugh­ter — on her plas­tic car — wedged her fin­gers into the crack of the door and tipped her car down on the first step.

She then fell down a flight of stairs (13 to be exact) as her car car­rened down the edge. After tum­bling face for­ward she landed on the con­crete at the base of the stairs. My brother-in-law heard the noise and rushed to the base­ment door almost trip­ping down the stairs him­self as he rushed to her aide. He imme­di­ately noticed that Zoe was cry­ing as she pushed her­self up on her knees. He grabbed her, checked for any dam­age and then called 911.

I arrived at my inlaws with that empty stom­ach feel­ing. As I parked the car and walked to the front entrance I passed the ambu­lance and my heart sank. Just the sight of an ambu­lance, no mat­ter the predica­ment, always sends me into a quiet frenzy. As I approached the front door my wife came out of the house with my daugh­ter Zoe in her arms. I breathed a sigh of relief and lis­tened as she spoke with the EMT about tak­ing Zoe to the hos­pi­tal even though they didn’t think there was any severe damage.

For the next 5 hours, my wife, Zoe and I sat in a cold hos­pi­tal room watch­ing Spong­bob and The Incred­i­bles as we waited for the Doc­tor to make her rounds. After a few vis­its we were informed that they would need to observe Zoe for a short time to see if a CAT scan was needed. A few more hours of wait­ing and the ver­dict was in; Zoe seemed fine and we could go home.

There’s an old say­ing about how par­ent­ing is a life­long com­mit­ment and how true that is. I’m begin­ning to under­stand the virtues of being a father; the joy of watch­ing your child come into their own, the won­der­ment of it all. It’s truly an expe­ri­ence that’s both sur­real and beau­ti­ful. Yet, there’s also the most impor­tant aspect of this com­mit­ment; the con­stant worry that your child is safe, no mat­ter how close or far apart you are. 

I can’t put my fin­ger on it, but lately I’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing zen-like sit­u­a­tions at gas sta­tions. Of all places to get in touch with my Bud­dhist or Chi side, a gas sta­tion never sprung forth in my mind as a loca­tion to have per­sonal rev­e­la­tion. Typ­i­cally when I pull up to the pump all I want to do is fill up my car and move on, but for the past few weeks that hasn’t always been the case.

Just the other day a gen­tle­man who looked to be in his late-50s was chat­ting with his work buddy as he filled up their truck. His hair was com­pletely white and he resem­bled, at least to me, W.C. Fields. His face was cov­ered in grease and his hands looked like torn leather, but his smile was geni­une. As I glanced over he chuck­led to him­self and said, “Life’s too short to not have fun.”

Now in my life­time I’ve been reminded of this many times, by my fam­ily and my friends, but it hits a stronger chord when it’s com­ing from some­one who, at least upon first impres­sion, doesn’t seem like a per­son who would heed that kind of advice. I guess this should be cou­pled with, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”.

I smiled back, lifted the noz­zle and slid it back into its rest­ing place and thought to myself that when we are most vuner­a­ble in our daily lives, wor­ry­ing about finan­cial issues, sick rel­a­tives and other things to occupy our minds, it’s always nice to remem­ber that there is some­one or some­thing out there to remind us that life is too short to not have fun every once in awhile.