MeiMei vs. Muni

The day before Halloween was a beautiful Friday morning in San Francisco. The sky wore its favorite fall shade, a sharp pale blue. “The perfect day for a bike ride,” I thought to myself. I packed up my computer, shouldered my backpack, and headed off to Samovar Tea House to write for a few hours.

Five minutes later, I was lying on the pavement on Market Street with a bloody split lip, smashed front tooth, and dislocated shoulder. I’d hit the infamous Muni train tracks at precisely the wrong angle and gone flying over the bike’s handlebars, landing on my right arm and my face. Ouch.

I made it to the ER, where doctors shoved my shoulder back in, gave me a sling, and told me to lay off the yoga for at least a month. They stitched my upper lip back together, and advised me to see a dentist about the tooth, which now sticks backwards into my mouth at about a 45-degree angle. All in all, they said, I was lucky. No permanent damage. All fixable.

I freaked out for a while. No yoga—my sanity! My perfect teeth—ruined! Braces for four months! Only mushy foods for the next four to six weeks! I threw myself a pity party. Poor me! Poor me! (Pity parties are the best—you should try one sometime if you haven’t already. Nothing like a good, long cry to release all those feelings of frustration and despair.)

Then I settled myself down. Literally, by sitting on my meditation cushion and just watching the breath flow in and out of my nostrils. I realized that, thank heavens, I could still type at my computer, so I wrote. I reveled in the visits from my wonderful friends, who brought me homemade pumpkin soup and savory (mushy) tamales, organic Vitamin E oil to prevent scarring, movies, laughs, and hugs. One even found a t-shirt sporting a hilarious cartoon of a biker hitting the Muni tracks (see below). I watched in awe as my lip miraculously repaired itself.

ParkLife Tee

A week later, what lessons have I (re)learned from this experience? A few.

First, there’s no reason to have a big, nasty reaction to unexpected and unpleasant experiences. It was okay to throw a fit for a day (or two), but that was enough. If I’d continued to feel sorry for myself, I only would have made matters worse—and probably interfered with the healing process. I have adopted the mantra, “So that’s that.” I can choose to be upset about my braces and the lack of yoga, or I can choose to accept my new reality—and feel appreciative of what I do have every day.

Second, I’m acutely aware of yet another reason to eat whole foods, exercise, not smoke, and generally be kind to your body. It’s not just so that you look and feel good. It’s also so that you give yourself the power to heal.

Third, I was reminded of the true nature of life. S.N. Goenka, the Buddhist instructor of my two ten-day Vipassana silent meditation retreats, frequently intoned, “Anicca, anicca, which means, in the ancient Pali language of the Buddha, impermanence.” Nothing is certain. Nothing remains stable. This is the truth. The trick is to move peacefully through the groundlessness–and preferably avoid stumbling on the Muni tracks along the way.