Slipping up on an banana skin is a standard slapstick gag. It’s the stuff of cartoons with no more basis in reality than Wiley Coyote running off the edge of a cliff and not realising he’s suspended in mid-air until he looks down.

Or so I thought.

I was crossing a busy street a couple of days ago, totally concentrated on avoiding the speeding cars. This particular stretch of road seems to attract large number of drivers who consider stopping at pedestrian crossingsto be optional. Suddenly I found myself sprawled across the tarmac (I think it was on one of the white stripes of the crossing) wondering what had hit me. Turned out it was a banana skin.

Not a big deal in itself, especially as I escaped with only minor bruising to my right ankle and my pride. Yet it got me thinking. Why had this freakishly cartoon incident happened?

Here’s what I came up with.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

(Gandhi)

This quote sums up my approach to life. My aspired approach to life, that is. I’ve still got some way to go as the truth is, at the age of 46, I’m still unlearning a lot of accumulated rubbish from my first 35 years.

This stuff is not deep, painful, unusual or traumatic. Sometimes, I think it might be easier to deal with if it was because it would be more obvious. It’s all regular, everyday beliefs about how the world, society and I function. There’s nothing extreme or extraordinary there.

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