Someone Got Hit Today...

Someone got hit today… I mean I got hit today… Well, maybe we got hit today. But, then again when getting hit is simply in a day’s work, who would really notice and who would truly care?

While I will eventually rewind and tell you what has brought me to writing this today, I cannot stop questioning what the greater significance or lesson is when you directly see someone get hit or more tragically, get severely injured or die in front of your eyes. I think often the process of watching someone else take a hit is more obtrusive to your own peace rather than the victim’s. I believe, often watching other people getting hit leaves you with seemingly simple but often complex questions: What should you do? What could you have done? How should you feel? Often, these questions linger in our minds and our hearts and never are answered.

But, what happens when you become the "victim" or the individual who is getting hit. In your perspective, you may always be getting hit. Life may seem to give you very little choice as to when, where, how, or why you’ll be hit next, but you simply have come to accept your fate. Life may seem to give you very little escape, no protection, and "bullet proof" vest to avoid life's threats to your body. So, when you’re lying on the ground, your world is spinning, and the rush of noise around you begins to settle and fade, you are often must make a decision.

Oddly, it seems as if the one who has gotten hit (often considered the victim) and the “overseer” or “onlooker” are spiritually in the same realm forced to make very similar decisions. Both questioning and both hardly hearing anyone answer.

What will we do? What should we have done? How do we feel?

I’m a true believer that no one suffers in the darkness, alone, there is always some sort of light. However, what makes us unable to see or be seen is the choices that we, the victim or the “onlooker” have made to construct our different realities.

Pain, is not what unifies us in these moments. Rather, we unite when asking questions about the decisions we are all challenged to make when things get tough and you seem weak.

So, today, as I sat in the back seat of the car of one of my friends, I looked through the back window pane to see a dark brown, skinny, older, male’s body floating in the air. Screeches, screams followed as the body hit the ground. Hard. No Movement. My friend continued to drive away, while dialing the local “Emergencia” number. As he is recounting the story of what happened to the responder, the soul of this man touched me. I asked in my broken Spanish, startled and shaking, should we go back? Should we return? My friend said no, this happens all the time, and continued driving towards our destination indicating the emergency vehicle would hopefully come soon.

As I walked into my house, still shaken up from seeing a man hit from a car that was traveling at least 60mph, I could only find comfort in the questions I began to ask, in the unknown, the one thing that linked me and this man. My heart hurts, not only because I am searching for what I could have done differently to prevent this man from being hit and possibly killed, but rather because I am at lost due to the unknown. Not knowing whether this man will ever be spiritually united with me again to answer...what could we do, what should we have done, and how should we feel...Together.