Carlson
Ever since I was a child, I’ve had the wish that everyone would be given at least one “do-over” in life. When I was young, I’m pretty sure that was my response to tragedy. I was only 10 years old when the janitor for the church where my father was pastor was seriously injured in a car accident and, after surviving a few weeks, died.
Louie had been more than the janitor of the church. He was a co-conspirator with my brother and me. Our family lived in the parsonage, the house for the pastor that was usually located next to the church. My brother and I, big baseball fans, loved to play “catch” in the front yard. My father assessed the situation and saw that a stray throw of the baseball could easily hit one of the stained-glass windows of the church. He warned us repeatedly, but, yes, you guessed it, one of our errant throws broke a window.
Louie was working in the church that day and somehow knew about our father’s warning. Instead of telling on us, he took us aside and said he’d take care of it quietly. And he did. I might have had a wish to do that throw over and not break the window, but that “do-over” was nothing compared to what I felt when I heard that Louie was in serious condition in the hospital.
I listened to adults as they described how the accident happened, how Louie and his wife were on a Sunday afternoon ride in the country. It was late summer, and because the corn was already high in northern Illinois, Louie had pulled out at an intersection of country roads and failed to see a car approaching from the left.
That was probably the first time I was faced with the chanciness of life. Had Louie driven five miles slower on their afternoon excursion, had he looked more carefully around the tall corn, or had Louie and his wife stayed home that afternoon, he wouldn’t have been hit. I kept thinking that a man as kind and generous as Louie should be allowed a “do-over.”
Living now into my mid-70s, I’ve witnessed other tragedies when I wished a friend could have had a “do-over.” I’m sure many people, in hearing bad news, think, “If only …”
In one sense, it might be a mark of maturity, of growing into adulthood, that we understand that life offers no “do-overs.” What happens cannot be reversed no matter how much we wish that were true.
But when I came across a Buddhist teaching recently, I found there is an mature and wise way to think of do-overs. The Buddhist teaching invites us to think of this day as, in a sense, a do-over. Whatever difficulty we face today, we should imagine that our first response is the way we reacted to the same difficulty at an earlier time. Life has now given us a chance to respond as if for a “second” time, in the way we wished we’d responded the first time.
The benefit of the Buddhist teaching is clear. Instead of reacting in an “off-the-cuff” or impulsive manner, it’s wiser to pause in difficult moments and imagine we’re being given a chance to replay this scene in a better way.
Of course, following this teaching doesn’t prevent tragedies happening our lives. But the teaching does offer a path that encourages us to reflect before we speak and act.
I don’t know about you, but speaking and acting more thoughtfully would have spared me a great deal of embarrassment and regret in the past. We can’t change the past, but we can change how we live in the future.
David Carlson of Franklin is a professor emeritus of philosophy and religion. Send comments to [email protected].
