My car accident is the best thing that ever happened to me.
By the time I write these lines, it has been roughly a year and a half since the night my wife and I faced death. At that time, we were not married yet.
The accident itself
I still remember every detail: driving home safely, listening to Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert in my car. We’re chatting casually about a nice party we just had with friends. We’re on the highway that encircles Nice (France), inside a tunnel. I’m driving safely. I suddenly see some lights from behind, and we feel the first crash propelling my car against the tunnel’s wall, then the second crash, then the third one. My girlfriend and our friend start screaming, so am I. We’re spinning in the tunnel, hitting the walls a couple of times.
The crash was so violent my car lost three wheels. Even though we were in shock, we were all alive, without a scratch. The other driver was drunk and angry at us because he knew he had just lost his license.
In the end, I quickly got a replacement car so I could start driving again and get over the psychological trauma. I remember I almost had another accident five days later, hallucinating over the shadow of a palm tree. My chest would hurt every time I had to drive on highways at night for several months.
First thoughts
It took me some time to realize how lucky we had been: light whiplash for me and nothing for my girlfriend or our friend. Had the crash happened 200 meters before, our car might have jumped over a bridge.
After a month, I felt relieved that nothing worse had happened.
Then came this question:
“What if my life had ended on that day?”
The answer was a real shocker: “Well, you’d have died while residing at your parents’ house with your girlfriend. You’d have left them with credits and a student loan to pay. You’d have left this world without having achieved any of your goals”.
Ouch. Like, right in the pride. In a way, it hurt more than the car accident itself.
Thank you for the lesson.
It was the slap in the face I needed: instead of mourning my failing life, I decided to embrace reality and throw that slap back.
I learned many lessons from this single event. Now, I believe I can sum these up:
Life is shorter than you think.
Yeah. It sounds like something horrible. However, it’s something highly motivating. Do you realize how much better you work with time constraints?
At the beginning of the year 2020, my girlfriend and I decided on some goals to achieve. We took the time to wisely plan what was going to happen to us during that year. Our goals would be achievable yet life-changing.
Even though the year got filled with unexpectable constraints (Coronavirus, lockdown, etc.), we could achieve eight goals out of ten by September. We knew how life could be short, so we knew we shouldn’t procrastinate. We now live in a little but cozy apartment. I stopped spending money like pocket money and started budgeting instead.
It’s important to move on.
Sh#t happens. Then what? What is more important: measuring how cruel your karma looks or finding solutions to your problems?
I stopped looking for fairness in the chain of events that were happening to me. I stopped believing in karma. I stopped believing in many things, like God, worldwide conspiracies, ghosts, and aliens altogether. I didn’t stop believing in all this because I had chosen not to believe, but rather because I decided not to bother.
Here’s why I decided not to bother with these complex problems: “How will my knowledge of ‘X’ impact my life?”
“Knowing” and “believing” are two sides of the same coin. If I decide to believe (or to know) whether something is true, I need to spend time researching why I should and why I shouldn’t. That time, as stated before, is highly limited. However, I know that for most subjects, there exists a scientific or philosophical consensus. I’m not stronger than the thousands of scientists and philosophers who have debated these matters before me, far from it!
Therefore, when I have a complex question, instead of following my instinct or trying to solve it, I look for a consensus. If there is one, I take it, but if there is none, I “archive” it in my head for further thinking. Then, I move on.
I mean: knowing that it was terrorists or that it was the CIA (I used to believe this) who had sent airplanes on the Twin Towers isn’t helping me to pay my rent. Therefore, I don’t care about that controversy anymore.
Optimize, optimize, optimize.
Thinking like a minimalist isn’t about disposing of everything that’s not crucial. It’s about optimizing the “profits over costs” ratio of the most important aspects of your life.
I don’t follow Facebook, Twitter, and such anymore. These give back too little to me, compared to the time I would spend there. I sold many books I had bought and could never read. I’m looking for things that improve more than what they cost. I consider these in terms of time, energy, feelings, and money.
Think about today, Plan for tomorrow, dream for the day after tomorrow.
I know what I dream of: being an independent private teacher. I used to love programming because I had never thought about teaching. To have a secondary source of earnings during the COVID-19 crisis, I decided to give teaching a try. Now, I realize it’s something I’m much more passionate about. It may be a temporary phase, or it may be that I found my vocation. So far, I don’t know. I’ll leave both doors open. Before my accident, I’d have said: “Let’s go!”, without preparing any plan B.
I realized how “kayaking on an unknown river” is a good image for living. Sometimes, the current is strong and unforgiving, and you need all your strength and concentration to avoid sinking. Sometimes, the current is slow and relaxing, and you can give your arms and your brain a rest, even fix your boat just in case it hits another rock.
Stay humble, accept failures.
No one is perfect. Of course, the night we almost got killed, I could have foreseen that crash a couple of seconds before it happened to us. I could have made the perfect car move to avoid the crash. Well, this didn’t happen. It’s OK. What’s important is not to look for perfection. What’s important is to allow oneself to make mistakes and to learn from them, to correct them.
Sometimes, you can learn a lot from events whose issue depends on you 100%, 50%, or not at all.
However, don’t think of yourself too harshly. It’s nonsense to compare oneself to a fictive image one has of his ideal self. Are there things you want to change? Then think about how the situation can evolve instead of finding the reasons for these to have happened.
“What if…” questions are useful when placed in the future, not in the past.
With this accident, I moved from a goalless dreaming conspiracy theorist to a reality-embracing skepticist with actual goals in life.
My car accident is the best thing that ever happened to me.
