Christa Baesler
English 101
Educational Narrative
Logic Dictates Emotion
Recently, I faced a life-altering situation that had me reevaluate my priorities and perspectives on the relationships I have in my life. I would like to say that my experience was pleasant and full of warm and fuzzies, but lessons ‘truly’ learned are seldom soft and sweet. In fact, it is my understanding that the tougher the experience, the more you remember the details and hence the lasting impression or, as I like to put it… ‘The lesson learned.’
On Sept. 29, 2012, my 18-year-old daughter, Kelsey, was in route from Spokane to the Tri-Cities. Eastern Washington is notorious for gusty winds that are fully capable of tugging or pulling a motor vehicle back and forth on the road. Such is the case in the accident that almost took the life of my child.
The automobile she was in proceeded to pass a semi-truck, a gust of wind pushed the vehicle towards the median. The driver tried to correct the small car and in doing so, struck the semi-truck. (They were moving approximately 70 miles per hour.) My daughter, who sat in the passenger front seat, hit the window with her face, shattering the glass. A split second after the initial impact with the 18-wheeler, the car rolled twice into the median and came to rest, upside down in a clearing between the two lanes of the highway.
The accident happened at 4:00pm. At 4:12pm, notification came from a total stranger who happened to be on scene and, by the Grace of God, had the sense to open Kelsey’s phone and look for “Mom’s Number.” Seeing the caller ID as ‘Daughter #1’, I answered the phone and in all truthfulness, I thought it was a prank call, telling me of the quick and edited version of an accident that had just happened. But the tone in the woman’s voice convinced me to the seriousness of the situation. A moment or so of gathering vital information, such as where the paramedics were taking my daughter and the fact that she was breathing on her own accord, I was off the cell. It took me all of 5 seconds to pull myself together and then formulate a plan of action. First thing was first; I needed to tell my husband about the call. Allowing him his moment of ‘freak out’ and then letting logic dictate our emotions, we worked out the quick details of where we needed to go, how we were going to get there and who we needed to contact. On an emotional level, my two worst fears were coming into fruition. First, the call every parent dreads “There’s been an unfortunate accident,” and second, that my child was all alone, scared and fighting for her life while I am ‘out of range.’ The idea that Kelsey was 5 hours away and alone haunted me, but I knew I had to remain calm and focused, or in a haste, we would not get to her in the projected 5 hours we knew it would take to travel the near 300 miles.
I can honestly tell you that the drive east was, to say the least, the longest drive of my life. Every ‘worse-case scenario’ crept into my consciousness and it took all of my might and energy to not give into the temptation of a meltdown. However, then I remembered something my Mom used to tell me and it brought such comfort and calmness to my mental state. Call it an educational moment for life, for it is this particular lesson that I embraced during one of the darkest hours of my life and in doing so, came out the other side with a new appreciation for life, love and the wonderment of all the tiny miracles it took to keep my daughter alive after her ordeal.
“In life, you will experience two major phenomena; the first is always ‘emotion.’ That is the knee jerk reaction you have to any given situation. It could be joy, jubilation, fear, anger. It is whatever emotion you feel ‘in the moment.’ Once you have worked through the emotions, logic steps in and navigates you through so that the ‘end-result’ lines up with the best possible outcome or scenario.” ~ Gail Fleischmann
I realize this simplifies every experience one may have, but if you think about it, there is truth behind the basics. In the above situation, my emotion was panic, fear and a loss of control. But… after my moment of ‘emotion,’ logic dictated my actual course of action. I knew I had to proceed rationally in order to accomplish my immediate goal, that being the need to get to Spokane and to help my daughter.
It was 11:45pm when we arrived at the Sacred Heart Hospital where paramedics transported Kelsey after the accident. I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath for near 5 hours until the moment I saw my daughter, standing in the lobby, waiting for me to rescue her from her near fatal ordeal. At first glance, I was able to assess that, although she was cut up, bruised and emotionally shaken, there were no other major injuries visible to the naked eye. That was such a relief. After a long moment of just holding her in silence, Kelsey began to recant the events of the afternoon. Her story affected my mind, body and spirit because in her rendition of the events, as they unfolded, I heard firsthand the lessons my Mom passed on to me, especially when Kelsey said, “I knew I had to remove myself from the state of emotion in an effort to get out of the situation. If I had stayed in that place of fear and confusion, I would not have gotten out of the car. I would not have known what to do to bring calm to the other girls who were still pinned under / in the car and I would not have had the wits about me to remember my training in Athletic Medicine. I knew I had to access the situation, administer emergency first aid, be the voice of reason since the others were frantic and most of all, I knew I had to trust that Heavenly Father and the Angels were with me, guiding me in what I had to do and then assist me in doing it. One thing I knew for certain was that the car rolled twice and the top of the car was severed from the body of the vehicle, therefore, inevitably, we all had head injuries and if we took one wrong step, anyone of us, myself included, could very easily not have walked away.”
I was astonished at the clarity in Kelsey’s re-telling of the tragic scenario. At the same time, I marveled in the fact that she recognized the presence of angelic beings sent there to help her and that my Moms wisdom grounded her enough to follow the golden rule of letting “Logic Dictate Emotion.’ In doing so, it very well may have saved her life.
By now, you’re probably wondering how the tale of Kelsey's experience translates into my educational experience and in all truthfulness, that is a fair question. The easiest way for me to answer it is to say that I learned to trust 'Logic' as it 'Dictates Emotion,' that my hard-work as a parent has paid off because my daughter has put into practice what I have been teaching and the reward for my efforts has been collected in that I witnessed firsthand her application of my said teachings. My lesson learned is that in a crisis, my cooler head will prevail and I to have enough common sense to listen to that 'little voice' because I just might never know when said little voice is the guidance from a place far beyond the scope of my imagination~ a place called Heaven.