Injuries and Accidents

A fall on the stairs. The door that catches your foot. The cut while chopping onions, even though you have done it a hundred times. The broken ankle, the sprained wrist, the burn at the stove. You say: "Bad luck." You say: "I wasn't paying attention." You say: "Just one of those things."

And perhaps that is true. Perhaps it really was a coincidence, a moment of inattention, an unfortunate convergence of circumstances. The medical picture is usually clear: tissue tears, bone breaks, skin burns. There is a wound, there is healing, there is a scar.

But if you look more closely — especially at recurring injuries, at series of accidents, at the pattern of things constantly "happening" to you — a different question arises. One you may want to let approach you gently at first: what was going on inside me, just before this happened?