Dear Friend,
I’d got myself into something of a tricky situation. It was the day of a tube strike and that mean’t the traffic was crazier than usual. I’d finished work in Camden, on the way home I was to pick up a computer hard drive for my then partner, drop that off at our flat, then a quick change and out again to visit my kung fu master.
It was one of those binds we can unwittingly weave around ourselves. I wanted to please my partner. We weren’t getting on so well. What we didn’t know is that a few years in the future our relationship would break down completely.
It ended with her slumped on the chequered linoleum kitchen floor, leaning against the fridge. Tears streaming, both of us as miserable as can be. No more talking. Staring at the facts. We’d outgrown one another.
She in her way, me in mine.
We made a ceremony with two floating candles.
We lit them after dark by the river behind our flat. Watched them float downstream, going their separate ways, mine got caught in some weeds and spluttered out.
On the day of the hard drive, I was running late. I’d made myself short of time by dilly dallying. Finding small unimportant things that suddenly needed doing. I’d decided to quit kung fu training. Had no clue how to break that news.
I’d over committed myself, and was being drawn into working as security for some businesses in central London that, well it was pretty clear that the legitimate faces of the aforementioned were also fronts for less palatable activities.
Sensing my hesitance my kung fu teacher had offered me extra tuition. I was to receive special treatment. It wasn’t something he offered every student. There was a cult of personality around him. I respected and feared him in equal measures.
At this time of my life I was looking for a male role model, someone to give my power to. Put it another way, I didn’t trust myself, know myself or like myself. I was uncomfortable with being in the driving seat of my own experience.
A chronic people pleaser I’d tangled myself up in a web of my own creation. Life was about to deliver up one of her more dramatic lessons.
The traffic coming into town was backed up solid, crawling along towards a major crossroads. Coming out of town the road was clear and I kept the motorbike under the speed limit. She was a Suzuki. A muscle bike from the late 70’s. Weighed a ton.
Something felt odd. The earth was tilted. The bike was sailing past a side turning when suddenly out of nowhere there’s a maroon Citroen haring headlong at me down the wrong side of the road. The driver had tried to cut the line of traffic and make a quick dart up the side street. He hadn’t seen me, panicked and instead of hitting the brakes, stepped on the accelerator.
The car was coming at an angle that cut off any escape routes. My brain processed the situation so quickly time slowed as I saw my options fall away.
I couldn’t go up on the pavement as it was crowded with pedestrians. The line of traffic blocked off all other options. It was too late to brake. The Citroen was accelerating at us.
My beautiful bike and me.
The world became soft as the bike hit the front of the car. I let go of the handle bars and was launched into a somersault. The bike wedged beneath the car, was crushed against the curb bringing it to a halt.
I’d somersaulted over the wreckage, landing on the other side, my back cushioned by the rucksack containing the hard drive. I’d kicked myself so hard as I flew that my heavy motorcycle boots had smashed the muscles of my left thigh. You don’t realise how hurt you are after an impact like that.
I got up from the ground. Looking at the tangled heap of metal that had been my friend I flew into a rage. Someone called the emergency services, in the mean time I hobbled around like a mad man looking for CCTV cameras and eye witnesses until the ambulance arrived and persuaded me that I might need checking over.
I remember the police grilling the driver of the car. The poor kid was in shock. The rubber marks he’d left were not, the police officer pointed out to him, caused by braking but by accelerating. He was lucky not to have killed me.
If I’d not let go, my body would be lying mangled in the wreckage and I guess I’d be watching the whole thing from an entirely different point of view.
You know I didn’t want the police to call anyone. Tell them what had happened.
I figured I’d go to hospital, get checked over and somehow rock up at home and play the whole thing down. I was still playing the super hero. The medics got it out of me. Things swung into action as the shock wore off and the pain the kicked in.
I was left at A&E. My partner was called. The bike was scraped off the road and taken someplace. I never saw her again. The insurance company took care of it.
That’s how I left my kung fu master and that’s how I reassured myself that my partner cared about me.
Would I handle things differently now?
Absolutely.
Did I have the presence of mind back then to be able to do things differently?
Clearly not.
Trying to make ourselves safe by pleasing the people around us is one of the few coping strategies we have access to when we’re kids. We can’t help but to give our power away. As adults we need to develop different skill sets.
The ability to allow others their own experience, to face their own challenges. The courage to communicate our own needs and to acknowledge their importance to us.
To befriend and appreciate ourselves as a friend.
Shed the guilt and shame we learned as kids.
Come home to the present moment.
Let the world be as it is.
Hold to the vision of a better world. That takes courage.
The courage to face difficult conversations, to let go of judgement, and especially for people pleasers, to stop being so hard on ourselves.
Amazingly the hard drive was undamaged.
My injury healed slowly and I was forced to heal on the inside, making sense of the deeper meaning of surface events.
The mind is startlingly powerful.
Imagine the power of minds joined together, working towards peace.
Starting with what’s going on inside.
Making peace with you.
Inner peace leads to changes in the outer world.
We’re not running out of time.
Time disappears when we are done with it.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey