What Can You Learn From Near Disaster?

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You've heard the phrase, "Live as if each day is your last." Although there is truth in the sentiment, I don't feel excited thinking this is my final day on earth. If it were, and I knew it, I hope I'd be saying farewells and words of love to those who matter while celebrating nature and simple moments, but I might be in the fetal position.

Recently, I stumbled onto a different tact that gave the perspective a more positive spin while interviewing a person in his 90s. We chatted about his life and realized there were many, many times he could have died during some of his adventures.

There was the time, as a farm boy of the 1930s, when a mule kicked him in the face, knocking him out cold. The country doctor declared that, had the mule's aim been an inch higher, he would have lost all his teeth. Two inches higher, and he would have been struck dead.

We began counting other events, too, including incidents during his years in the Air Force. Then, there were the hours of his life he spent driving thousands of miles on country roads working his business, with numerous collisions and near-miss accidents.

Together we added up at least two dozen episodes that could have been his last. Does this sound like a maudlin exercise? Interestingly, as the client got to thinking about it, he realized something profound and declared how miraculous it was that he is here with 98 years accumulated.

I wondered if I would feel the same as someone in my 60s. I pondered my perilous encounters, too. There was the time the hair dryer almost fell in my bath and another when a semi-truck nearly rear-ended my tiny car. Plus, there were all the other dumb choices I've made in the past that could have gone south.

The exercise drilled home that living is precarious and precious. Life is an adventure none of us signed up for, yet we are here and seem wired to be hopeful.

Today is mine. Tomorrow is none of my business. Elizabeth Elliot

YOUR ALTERNATE LIFE STORIES

The concept of "almost endings" takes a different turn if you consider the alternate directions your life might have gone had other choices or circumstances occurred. These "ghost lives," as Cheryl Strayed calls them, straddle the lives we are living. Sometimes, people get stuck believing those other life stories would have been better.

The "what might have been" thinking is something we all do occasionally. Psychology Today refers to this as "counterfactual thinking."

Thinking about an alternate universe of your life doesn't serve you, though, unless you recognize that EVERYTHING about your life in this alternate story would have been entirely different as well. And with that other life, there is no guarantee of a better life.

THE DEATH THEME MIGHT HAVE MERIT

Tallying up the times you could have met your end in your past may lead you to gratitude, but wishing for another life means the person you are now wouldn't have existed either. Are you catching a recurring death theme?

These days, looking back and realizing how far I've come and that I'm still here feels like something to celebrate. And contemplating alternate life stories is tantamount to wishing my current life out of existence.

However, recognizing that none of those other lives offer an assurance of a better today is inspiring and puts all the angst over past life decisions into perspective.

As Dr. Ellen Langer explains, it's important to be at peace with your life choices and the path of your life because the decisions you make are "right" for who you are in the present. And, if you have a tomorrow, there is every chance your life story and you will change with it. You don't know how other decisions or directions might have turned out, but you’ve managed to arrive here with all the mishaps and stories of the past, so try to savor the present.