Life, One Second at a Time

The scene: the skiing accident right after slamming into the wood post. I was lying on the snow, going into shock fast, and almost could not believe what just happened. When I hit the wood post across my upper abdominal area, I had so much speed that my entire body wrapped around the post, and then rebounded back. It was like my entire body was a rag doll during those few moments. When I rebounded back after impact, the force threw my body a few inches away from the post.

Immediately after the skiing accident the pain was so extremely excruciating that it was too overwhelming and too painful to think about the future. Even trying to think just 10 minutes into the future was too much to handle. My intuition told me that I had internal bleeding, but at the same time I knew I would be okay.

The only thing I could do was start living life one second at a time. One second goes by quickly enough that it made it a little easier to get through the pain. When I tried to think about ten minutes into the future, I became very anxious wondering how in the world I was going to make it through this extreme pain for that long. So, all I could do was live one second at a time. I knew that eventually I would make it off the hill and end up in the emergency room. But during the present moment I simply could not think that far ahead. When future thoughts would pop into my head I would go back to focusing on living just one second at a time.

Life, one second at a time. It can make a very difficult situation a tiny bit easier. I hope to never have to live my life one second at a time ever again (unless if it's something I try for fun).