Saturday 8 February 2020

The accident

I have been struck afresh this week by something which happened far away, and its effects on so many people, including myself. Nothing extraordinary in that; the government in London puts taxes up, and here, 200 miles away, my income is more circumscribed. But this week brought it home to me in a way I hadn't realised before.

A pedestrian was sadly killed on a major road about thirteen miles from here. That road was closed during the morning rush hour and beyond. I was caught up in the resulting entanglement as drivers sought ways of getting to their destination along country roads not used to heavy traffic. I arrived nearly an hour late for a nine o'clock meeting. A friend abandoned her attempt to drive forty miles to take her mother to a hospital appointment. Along the roads I was using, secondary-age children were heading home; the school bus had failed to turn up within the appointed time. No doubt scenes like this were repeated in a wide circle around here.

It speaks to me of the interconnectedness of life, our dependence on one another. 'No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main'  wrote John Donne nearly four hundred years ago. This is a challenge to our autonomous view of ourselves in 2020, where I will do what I want, no matter the effect on others, or the effect on the planet. Somehow, that 'road traffic accident' brought home the idiocy of that self-centred view in a way other far-away happenings failed to do. It reinforced our connected-ness. 'Though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread'; these are words I shall hear again today, and today they will have a depth and a resonance that was lacking last week.

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