You know how people are always using that expression “one wrong step…”?

You know the one I mean. The one which is supposed to be some sort of philosophical meandering comment on the nature of the universe, destiny, fate, and the multipathed quantum omniversed theory of existence that should really make you question your own mortality and whether or not your life matters or if time is playing tricks on you? You know that one?

For some reason I tend to think of life as this series of small little steps. You step here and there, and even if your not really “walking” per se, you are stepping second by second through time, making a chain of decisions that — conscious, subconscious, or unconscious — lead to another decision that may or may not send you down the same or a different path. IT was all quite weird, because I was reading “The Matrix and Philosophy” (really, I was) on the bus yesterday afternoon, contemplating yet another treatise on the fate and freedom questions that plague so many thinkers and philosophers who don’t have real jobs to fog their brains. My sister gave me the book for Christmas, and for some reason, though I have been meandering (that’s the second time I’ve used that word) through it since, I actually felt overly motivated to read it this past weekend. It was probably a culmination of playing the aforementioned video game (Enter the Matrix), my semi-regular desire for some text that’s a little more meaty than Harry Potter, and the fact it was sitting on my bedside table looking lost and dejected.

So where were we? Fate. Philosophy. And the notion that one step can change your whole day.

I took one of those “wrong” steps yesterday afternoon around 4:25 right in front of the Broadway skytrain station as I was getting off the number nine bus on my way home from work. That wrong step was followed by a sort of fumbling tumbling step, wherein my ankle did a sharp ninety degree bend in a way that was both fundamentally wrong and deeply painful.

My nervous system seemed to agree, slowed my heart rate down, dropped my blood pressure quite sharply, and took the opportunity to introduce my suddenly.limp.body to the sidewalk beside the heavily populated bus stop. During the twenty seconds or so whilst my conscious brain was off, lost in dreamy philosophical exploration of the universe, and on an inappropriately timed coffee break from the actual job of looking after my body in a public place, some kindly strangers beckoned the Skytrain officials who managed to drag me and my belongings into the station proper and call an ambulance.

This is about where my brain rebooted and — though slightly foggy — started the new chain of events that would bring me idly to the local hospital emergency room. I spent the next four hours there, lying (ahem) vulnerably in an ER alcove waiting for a few moments of the doctor’s time and then later for some xrays of my ankle — now wrapped, bruised, sore, and completely unable to support my weight.

Needless to say, I am working from home today (and yes, I actually am working — they emailed me some stuff to do) and further contemplating the nature of fate and fancy as it relates to the path that brought me from one wrong step off the regular number nine bus to the oddly twisted and bizarrely surreal evening I had last night, and my current state of vague yet bothered health this morning.