But What If We HAD/HADN’T?: The Flip Side Of Fate (A Lesson For National Karma Day)

It’s the blame game. We’ve all played it. We’re late for an appointment, or we miss our turn or worse, we have an accident. It’s so easy to look over at the person sitting next to you and say to them, “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t…”.

I came close to that a few years ago when my wife promised my son she’d pick him up from the movie theater and then, after hanging up, asked me to go. I was pretty hot about her making a promise that she expected me to keep and then giving me (what I considered to be) a flimsy excuse about why she couldn’t go.

Soon after, I picked him up in a funk and tried not to fuss at him on the way back. I knew it wasn’t his fault, but my frustration was eating at me and looking for an easy target. Fortunately, common sense got the best of me and I opted to remain quiet, like him. He could tell I wasn’t happy about the situation and that a conversation was not on the menu.

While driving and enjoying my therapeutic daydream about hitting her with water balloons, I made an illegal left turn across traffic to avoid waiting in the long line at the intersection for the left turn.

The police were right there to see it.

I’d made that turn dozens of times. It’s a convenient way to avoid the line, taking you right into the Speedway gas station parking lot with the “turn in only” lane. We’d ALL done it. Everybody takes advantage of that shortcut.

I’m just the one who got caught. Read that again.

As the police officer ran my plates, I sat there in the parking lot, pressing permanent finger prints into the steering wheel, all I could think about was how I wouldn’t have been in that situation had she picked him up as she promised. I silently partially blamed him for needing a ride, even though again, I knew it wasn’t his fault. I even blamed every car ahead of me that made me decide to cross the street to begin with.

I blamed everybody. Everybody, that is, except myself.

But this isn’t about that day. I was clearly wrong and got the ticket for a moving violation on my own merit. I chose to do wrong and I suffered the consequences. That alone can easily be a blog post for another day. What I want to talk about is my blaming my misfortune on others, when it could easily have been worse.

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Let me switch it up a little. How many times have you been in an incident and thought about how it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t done this or that? Or if you had left the house 10 seconds sooner, or later? If you hadn’t said yes or no? And so forth and so on…

We think about negative consequences so often that we fail to recognize all of the times we’d actually been spared from catastrophe.

That’s right, the near-misses. The accidents that never happened.

As a former 25-year Environmental, Safety and Health Manager/Director, I used to think about those every day. I still do. All of the accidents we did NOT have that day. The average factory worker didn’t (and still doesn’t) think about them because they’re not wired that way. They merely consider the production volume and what they earned by all the hours they worked.

I’ll bet YOU don’t think about the missed accidents either. Admit it.

Seriously. How many times have you clocked out and said, “Gee, I didn’t have an accident today?” Like I said, you’re not wired that way.

But me, I only thought about what DIDN’T go wrong. Mainly because that was my job: Accident Prevention, Response, Treatment, Investigation, Analysis and Recurrence Prevention. That vicious cycle.

Let’s look at it this way.

How many times have you driven to work, the store, movies, or anywhere else without an accident?

Tens of Thousands.

Now, how many of those times have you actually witnessed or driven by an accident or narrowly escaped?

Now think about all the times you said to yourself, “If I had been here just a few seconds or minutes sooner, that might have been me!” Seriously, think about it. All of those times you decided to relax a few minutes more before going for a drive, or even taking a walk. All those times you decided to use the restroom or get a drink of water before grabbing your car keys…

And what about those people who missed what became a tragic flight or those who didn’t make it to work or school on the day of an explosion, devastating fire or random shooting? What about those people who did NOT make it to work at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, one of our nation’s most horrendous days in its history?

Here’s the thing, people. We don’t and will NEVER know all of the many catastrophes we’ve avoided simply by the choices we HAVE made. The hundreds and thousands of unfortunate occurrences we could have experienced on one simple road trip to Six Flags, that drive to the movie theater, or even that walk down a crowded flight of stairs. We don’t know and I repeat, we will NEVER know. Not unless you have access to the multiverse, where in every plane of existence, events are predicated on one miniscule change you made from this reality (a left, instead of a right; an action, instead of a hesitation: a punch, instead of walking away…).

Besides, who’s to say that by making that illegal turn that day I didn’t avoid getting t-boned at the intersection? Not saying at all that what I did was right.

But then again, who knows?

So be thankful, people. That’s all I’m saying.
Instead of getting angry about life’s little mishaps, remember that they could always, easily, have been worse…

…much worse.

Let’s be grateful, for making it through another day, and every day you’re fortunate enough to see. Every day that you get to do it all over…

…at least one more time.

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