A year ago today, I almost died. Now, I know that sounds dramatic, but if my neighbors had not heard me crying for help after my car slipped off its jack and landed on top of me, I would have been dead within a minute, EMTs told me as they loaded me into the back of an ambulance.
Sidebar: My health-insurance company and car-insurance company butted heads when determining which of them was supposed to cover the cost of the ambulance! Yes, I got injured because of a car, but it was not an automobile accident. The car was not even running! I may as well had been crushed by a vending machine. Sigh. OK, sidebar over.
Anywho, I have never been so close to leaving this world, and I’m sure many Mississippians have had scary moments like that—moments that make your blood cold and your eyes unfocus if you let yourself return to that headspace again for too long. As tough as we like to consider ourselves at times, we are all mortal. I wish I could have gone a few more years before facing that reality so directly head-on, but I’m choosing to count my blessings that I am able to wish anything at all right now.
Sure, I have a “bum shoulder” at 28 years old (there go my chances at being a professional dodgeball player), but I’m still breathing. Granted, my partner has forbidden me from working underneath a car ever again, but I never really loved doing that sort of thing anyway. Yes, my maternal grandfather has run his own auto repair business for decades and is even a part-time professor at a trade school in Indiana, but this indoor kid prefers not having grease on his hands. So, hey, I have an excuse now!
Humor aside, my accident left me grateful for the opportunity to savor life. Is it cliché to say, “Life is a gift”? Perhaps some may think so. But the time I spent falling more deeply in love with my partner in 2024 was a gift. The adventures we and my friends have shared over the last 12 months have been a gift. The new foods I’ve tried, the comic books I’ve read, the old Game Boy games I’ve beaten—they have all been gifts that enriched my life, in ways both large and small. No amount of eye-rolling from those who think I’m pouring it on thick can take those gifts away from me or trivialize their value.
So, cheesy or not, I’ll repeat: Life is a gift.
In the year 2025, none of us know what lies ahead. We live in a world where gun violence can erupt anywhere, one day after another, like the one that struck a crowd in New Orleans just hours into the New Year. New leadership is about to take over Washington, D.C., and I know many of us worry about what the future holds for our nation. Uncertainty abounds. We may experience times when the weight of that uncertainty bears down on us. The cure to alleviating that pressure, at least to some degree, is to focus on the facets of our lives that bring us peace and joy.
During dark days, call your best friend and chitchat about nothing and everything at the same time; buy yourself that to-go meal you’ve been craving for weeks on end; stream that comfort show; save up your PTO days and schedule yourself a rare vacation (I traveled to Philadelphia, Pa., for the first time last August and loved immersing myself in the city’s culture and history). Whatever benign thing makes you appreciate life, indulge yourself, albeit responsibly.
Breathe. Yes, life is unpredictable, but it’s beautiful, too. Yes, we can spend time listing off dozens of complaints we have about the state of our lives and the world, but if we worry too much, we’ll miss out. Anxiety is a dragon, I understand. We can’t always slay that dragon, but on some days, we can at least tame it. None of us is guaranteed tomorrow, so take time to place uncertainty aside and embrace the gift that is life. I know that I definitely intend to.
This MFP Voices essay does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
