Feeling Thankful (Or, How a Car Accident Forced Me to Take a Beat)

I got in an accident this week. Counting the time that my father rear-ended me at a stop sign (and somehow did $800 worth of damage to my car), that’s three accidents in my life, and the first in almost fifteen years (thanks, Dad). As anyone who’s ever experienced this knows, it’s jarring, to say the least. My first reaction was to put my head down on my steering wheel, in frustration, anger, and irritation.

I’m not hurt. And thank goodness, neither are the other people. (Nor was anyone in the other two incidents.) But there’s something weird that happens in that moment. You forget to be grateful. You forget to recognize that, wow, this could have been a million times worse. Instead, you go to anger and irritation over how this incident, this moment, is going to completely upend your life.

And it does. I’ve spent the past few days dealing with insurance, and the body shop, and the rental car company, and all the paperwork and details that comes after. And again, you forget to be grateful. When the body shop tells you it’s going to take at least a month to do the repairs, you forget to be grateful that it’s not six months, or that your insurance has provided you with a rental car.

Or maybe you don’t, but I certainly have. As numerous colleagues and friends have checked in on me, I’ve been forced to remember to be grateful. Grateful that, without hesitation, good friends dropped everything and came and sat with me in the rain, waited on the police and a tow truck, carried me to the body shop on the other side of town and home again. Grateful for friends and colleagues who upended their schedules to drive me back to the body shop, to the rental car place, and offered to take me to run errands and to give me a car, even. Grateful for the countless texts and emails checking on me. None of this surprises me; this is who these people are. But it reminds me to get out of my own head for a moment and to be grateful.

And yet. One of my first thoughts, after getting home, was how lucky I was that the next two days were almost completely clear of meetings as I worked through the details of all this. In the first moments after the accident, which occurred as I was picking up bagels for a work meeting, I wondered who would pick up the coffee and donuts the next morning.

Obviously, we canceled the meeting and nobody cared. But it reminds me of the absolute lack of margin in my life, for illness, for deep thinking work, and even for an unexpected car accident. What if this had happened the previous week, or next? I might not have been so able to spend half a day on the phone or making numerous trips across town. Certainly, few of us have unlimited free time to just deal with things. But what benefit is there to these overscheduled, overcommitted lives if they don't actually allow us to live?

So yes, the accident was jarring. And yes, it has upended my life. But I’m choosing to focus on how it can upend my life for the better, and to let go of a bit of the worry over the things I cannot change. Is this aggravating? Yes. But maybe there’s a chance to gain a thing or two in the process. After all, if you’re going to go through something, no matter how terrible, you might as well learn from it. You might as well come out better, on the other side.