Pondering fate

I ran into a former TV co-worker on Facebook this week. I had not seen or heard from him since about 2000. I was astonished to learn that sometime after leaving the business himself, he had been in an accident that left him a quadriplegic.

That got me to thinking about some of the other people I had known. In the years after I lost contact with them, one had been killed in a plane crash while returning from an assignment. Another, also while on assignment, had died of a heart attack I suspect was induced in part by job-related stress. A third, who had lost her job with my employer while recovering from a kidney transplant in about 1989, had died in Florida.

I would consider myself more deserving of karmic opprobrium than any of those other people, but I've had, for the most part, nothing but good fortune since escaping those awful years that began with the Waco siege and ended with leaving television.

I live rather comfortably in my urban sanctuary, retired at age fifty-five, small 'e' if not capital 'e' enlightened. I surround myself with incense and exotic far eastern music that take me as far away from that old reality as I can go without physically moving. I'm surrounded by helpful and compassionate friends. I come and go as I please. I feed the birds and squirrels that come to my back yard and befriend the neighborhood cats. I live in a part of the city that development patterns have isolated from the rest of the metro, so it's almost like I live in a small town. Other people's issues, needs and demands seldom intrude on my life.

When I consider what happened to others, who often left behind loved ones and children, my own occasional nightmares and other annoyances seem insignificant.