How Fragile We Are

You can't help but notice it, with crime hitting headlines every day. We think we're strong - but these bodies are fragile.

Take poor old MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in Zimbabwe - beaten up to the point of needing a brain scan. It's so easy to break a skull, a bone, bruise and batter the bits that make us.

Two young girls recently murdered. So easy to snuff out a life. To stick a small body in a drain or a ceiling.

A young chap from the Overland forum, in the wrong place at the wrong time - crushed under the fallen load of a runaway truck that hit another 7 cars.

A family of three wiped out on their way home after the Argus cycle race. One overturned bakkie was all it took.

It's a sobering thought - life clings so carefully to sinews, nerves, bone, blood. So delicately in balance, enclosed in soft tissues. So easy for us, for those we love, to suddenly no longer be there. To face incredible injury that changes them forever. To experience pain.

Yet our lives rush on. We assume we'll see the same faces, hear the same voices again tomorrow. That they'll always be there, as they are now. We think we'll tell them tomorrow how much they matter, we'll appreciate their presence tomorrow, spend more time with them tomorrow.

What if we never get a tomorrow?

(this concludes serious mulling for one day)