A couple of years ago, while driving to my place of work with my just grown-up daughter, we were hit from the side and behind by a large truck. Carried along for an interminable hundred feet or yards, she gained control of the small auto and we came to rest beside the freeway, plowing down a road sign upon the way. I found my self, that day and for several days afterward, wanting…needing to confess my surprise and positive pleasure at being there, wherever, and with whomever. Life’s angers, wishes, all seemed vain and very small compared with the fact of our remaining presence.

Strangely, then, the experience of a close-call became cleansing; a moment in time became all of our time. Actual, we felt actual in a way of great completeness. And, in a certain way, life was renewed, a gift to have a future; what, now, to do with it? No longer in debt to my own history, but indebted to futurity. I wonder: must it require that level of experience?