The Opportunity to Make One Second Count

One second may be the only the barrier you face between life and death. As I was surfing the web recently, I came across a powerful blog called One Second written by Alison, a woman widowed by a drunk driver. She is the mother of three daughters and she is on a mission to raise safe driving awareness. It only takes one second to make a choice that will lead to safety or recklessness. In her One Second Installations, she engages participants in a way that challenges them to think new ideas and to create momentary experiences that stick with them to encourage safe driving.

Her latest blog post tells about a recent One Second Installation. She and her crew brought a steel hospital table and a body bag to the Surf Club one evening. At the Surf Club she offered people the opportunity to be zipped into the body bag by their friends. Although everyone was interested, nobody volunteered. So she waited. Two hours later after the crowd had some drinks at the bar people started to volunteer. There was nervous laughter as people repeatedly made sure that their friends would unzip them after a second in the bag. An hour later, fortified by even more alcohol, people were having a good time being zipped in the bag and then unzipped. Alison was afraid that the point of the exercise was being lost. This was not supposed to be a fun event. Rather it was supposed to be a wake up call about 1) what it feels like to be in a body bag 2) trusting one’s friends 3) consciously making choices.

Four hours after the start of the installation, someone went too far. He zipped his friend in the bag and refused to unzip him. The person in the bag protested but this only made the crowd laugh. The combination of alcohol and laughter only strengthened the friend’s decision to keep the bag zipped. Suddenly, this was no longer a humorous event. The person in the body bag was truly panicked. Finally the friend relented. The person in the bag emerged saying, “You can’t screw with people’s lives like that – It’s not f***ing funny!”

So often we make spur of the moment, unthinking decisions that cause other people pain or fear or some amount of suffering. We don’t need to have alcohol to dull our awareness although alcohol certainly will do so. When our awareness is absent so are our senses of efficacy and power diminished. We treat ourselves as so much less than we truly are. However, if each of us were to just spend one second consciously considering our impact in the moment imagine what could change. Perhaps a friend would refuse to allow another friend who is intoxicated to drive. Perhaps, instead of taking a paper bag at the store, you brought your cloth bag to transport your groceries. Perhaps upon hearing some negative gossip, you chose not to pass it on. Maybe just because you are satisfied with your health coverage, you could imagine what it is like for someone who is ill and uninsured. The list of possibilities is endless. Just imagine if we all took one more second to contemplate our impact in the world at any given moment, what might be possible? What impact could our collective moments of consciousness have? It’s your choice. Wake up to this moment right now! It’s yours. Make it count in the way that you truly desire.

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This entry was written by Judith Cohen, MCC, CPCC and posted on August 17, 2009 at 12:48 pm and filed under Social Sciences. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.

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