Lessons From A Fall: Improbable Things Sometimes Happen

an update about where I've been and the first of my reflections spurred by what happened

A caveat right at the start. I’m usually a bit skeptical about this genre of post, namely the “I had this experience, and here’s what it taught me”. The implication so often is that the lesson one learned for oneself is something that others can (and should) easily pick up and adopt within the scope of their own (usually quite different) lives. I do write them on occasion, for example this one, when I think there might be something genuinely useful there for my readers. But for the most part, as those who read my work regularly know, I stick to other sorts of posts.

This one does a bit of double-duty for me. With a few exceptions, I’ve been rather “radio-silent” the last week and a half. I’ve shared information about what’s taken place with my students, my clients, family and friends, and a few other people. That selectivity was less on a need-to-know basis, and much more for the reason that my energy, thought, and capacities have been largely limited to just the most pressing of needs, and to an ongoing process of medical decisions, operations, and recuperation. I have a sizable “digital footprint”, and my readers, viewers, listeners, and other followers are quite engaged.

About a week and a half ago, I had a quite literal “slip and fall”. My foot went out from underneath me, and I fell directly, as precise as you might like, right onto my right hip. The pain was immediate and immense, but I assumed that I’d merely hurt it, and that after catching my breath and the pain receded a bit, I’d be able to get back up. That was decidedly not the case, and I discovered after a few minutes that while I was able to move my right leg a bit, doing so was a bit short of agony, and that there was no possibility of putting any weight upon it.

Long story short, we went to emergency, and after they took x-rays, it was confirmed that I had fractured my hip and the top of the femur, and not in any simple manner. From there, it was an ambulance ride over to another emergency at the main hospital campus, where they did more and closer examinations, and clarified that the remedy in this case would be a total hip replacement surgery. I was then moved to a room, made comfortable, and waited for that operation, which took place about a day and a half later.

Since then, I have been recovering and recuperating day by day, my body settling into and around the new, artificial fixture within it. Last week, I met with nobody, understandably enough. This week, I have taught my academic classes in online sessions. In the coming weeks, I’ll resume more and more of my usual varieties of work, adding bits in as I become able.

With my body largely immobile, and then just less mobile than I’m accustomed to, spending lots of time in bed or in a chair, I’ve had not only a number of experiences but plenty of time to reflect upon them. So you might say that I’ve been furnished with a number of half-developed thoughts, raw material for posts that might prove of some interest, at least to some. (I certainly don’t expect them to be automatically of interest to all or even most!)

The matter I’d like to mention first has to do with the very beginning of all of this. I got asked about the fall by a number of doctors and nurses. Some of them were a bit incredulous. The odds of falling, not from any height other than that of the length from my foot to my hip (so no great height), and landing just right on my hip joint with enough force to shatter the bones within the socket, seemed very low. Like threading the proverbial needle just by happenstance. And yet, in this particular situation, that’s precisely what happened.

This is one of those events that has an incontrovertible that. It simply is the case. The why is something much more murky, and while not strictly speaking unknowable, practically speaking, any deeper explanation, whether strictly physical or in terms of other factors, will remain at best within the realm of hazy conjecture.

There are two extreme sides one wants to avoid in these sorts of matters. Many people find galling that sort of situation, where the that is crystal clear but the why remains inevitably obscure. They keep seeking out explanations for why something they know happened, took place just that way. They might give in to the temptation of inventing explanations that at least partly satisfy their itching need to know (or to feel they know). In cases like this, that’s a motivation I don’t share. I’m fine with saying that sometimes things just do happen as they do, even if perhaps there could be a complex explanation lurking in the background.

We don’t want to swing over to the other side, however, and just shrug our shoulders routinely at matters for which we are generally capable of ferreting out, by our own efforts or aided by others, some satisfying explanations, at least provisional whys. That’s not a useful disposition for a person to develop or display either, as they go on through their lives.

All of these matters fall within the domain of what many ancient, medieval, and early modern thinkers classed under the rubric of fortuna, which is perhaps better rendered by “chance” than “fortune,” or even better “complex randomness”. Even in our late modern, technological age, one could make a case that so much of what we do or experience remains within fortuna’s scope. I don’t hold any sort of dogmatic position on these matters myself, but I’m certainly willing to keep plenty of speculative room open in my general approach to life.

So unlike a number of other people I’ve run across recently, I’m myself untroubled by the improbability of the “just-right” fall that shattered my hip, and necessitated the emergency hip replacement surgery I underwent and have been recovering from. I’m quite happy in noting that contrast. Is this some great metaphysical truth that I’ve been taught some lesson about? Perhaps not. In fact, let’s just amplify that into “probably not”. But it’s of interest to me to take note of and think about, and perhaps it might be to some of you readers as well

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Gregory Sadler is the president of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.