Do you believe that someone, somewhere watches over you and tries to keep you from harm? That things happen for a reason or many reasons, and we don’t always(or indeed very often) know why?
My old friend W has lived an extraordinary life, working and living in some very strange and often dangerous places. I first met him about 22 years ago, when for a short space of time, he was trying domestic life and lived in the next street to me in the north eastern town where I lived when I first married. We babysat his little girl. Over the intervening years, we’ve moved a good few times and he has clocked up tens of thousands of miles travel. He sends postcards from round the world, reappears at irregular intervals with tales and souvenirs and marvellous gifts and then vanishes again. I get postcards and packages from all over the globe; he indulges my strange fascination with rocks and sends parcels of rocks from the places he’s been that I, in all probabilty will never see, so I can sleep with them under a pillow and dream a psychometric dream.
The last time I heard from him was about a month ago when I got first an email and then a postcard from Libya.
I really didn’t think any more about it till the news the other night told me about the plane that crashed at Tripoli airport. I didn’t even think much then, until the news came through that there were Britons on that plane. Then a cold wave went through me. You see, because he has no family, we and a few other friends have become his official family: I may even be named as his next of kin. I’m certainly his executor.
Rather than wait and worry, I emailled him. I figured that if I have no reply within a week, then I will start looking on the manifest list or the list of casualties.
Late last night, I got a reply. No, he was fine. BUT: he’d been trying to get back to Libya from South America, and he’d been bumped off the flight he ought to have been on and therefore missed his connection.The connection should have taken him to meet the plane that crashed. He’d been booked on that plane.
You can imagine how it happened and how cross he must have been to have lost his flight and to have to sit and wait for the next one. We’ve all done it; got angry and frustrated at how things unfurl at times.
His final comment on his email to me: “My angel strikes again.” You see, he’s had near misses before, not to mention almost fatal accidents, and he’s always believed he won’t be allowed to pass on till he’s done whatever he was meant to do on earth. He’s still trying to figure out what that is, but you get the point.
For a large number of people, that flight was the end of the road for them. But for my friend, it wasn’t. I don’t know why. I do know I am glad it wasn’t. I’m not certain I believe in the popular idea of guardian angels, with your very own celestial body guard growing greyer of hair by the year, but I do believe our lives are watched and cared for and we each have our time to go. The book of Ecclesiastes has it well:
“For everything, its season, and for every activity under heaven its time: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time for mourning and a time for dancing.” (Ecclesiastes 3, 1-4)
I’m glad that this time it wasn’t his time to die and it wasn’t our time to mourn.
Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking 