A few days ago, a very interesting thought came to me. I was thinking about my drive that day, which was a 118 kilometer trip on the freeways, going home for the weekend. I sat in the comforting chair of my old bedroom and thought, for no particular reason, about what would have happened if I had gotten into an accident on that drive.
Well, for a start, I probably would not be sitting in my chair right now having this thought. At the very least I would still be stuck at the scene or have just resumed my journey. At the very worst I would be dead (discussions about things possibly worse than death are absolutely valid but are omitted here). In any case there would be a lot of time lost (from a few hours to an eternity) and a number of complicated consequences. Suddenly I felt extremely grateful for the present moment. My chair felt more comfortable than before and my old bedroom looked cozier and more beautiful.
What a nice thought! I would have gladly wrote about this simple experience alone, but my brain did not stop there. I continued imagining the aftermaths of my accident. In my imaginations I was heavily injured. I didn’t check my blind spot properly and had crashed into another car while changing lanes. Both of our cars were badly damaged and the other driver even more injured than I was — or maybe even dead? As silly as it was, imagining such things out of nowhere, I suddenly found my actual self feeling very stressed. If I was in that situation, what wouldn’t I do to have another chance to drive more carefully?
And that was when the very interesting thought occurred: maybe that did happen to me today. Maybe I did in fact get into an accident and I was heavily injured because I didn’t check my blind spots and both of our cars were badly damaged and the other driver was dead, but somehow I had miraculously gotten a second chance to forget all about it, go back in time and do it all over again, and here I am sitting in the comfortable chair of my cozy and beautiful bedroom after a nice, normal drive on the freeways, feeling relieved and grateful thanks to that miracle.
As ridiculous as this thought seems to be, I encourage you to really consider it for a minute, just for the sake of this thought experiment. If a consequence of this miraculous second chance is that I will forget about it, then I can reasonably argue that maybe it did happen (After all, everything is just inside our heads, right? Maybe I will follow up on this thought in another article). Consider that I really did get into a bad car accident, and that by some strange force of nature I was able to forget about it, go back to the beginning of that event, and re-experience it.
Regardless of whether this is real or not, I think this thought experiment can bring some interesting perspectives to the way we live every day. When having a conversation with someone, imagine that you have already had that conversation and it went rather terribly, but now here you are again, with no memory of that bad conversation and another chance to converse more effectively; When working on a project, imagine that this project had already come to an end, and it didn’t go the way you had hoped, but now here you are again, with the opportunity to do it right this time; When getting into your car, imagine that this drive had already happened and you had gotten into an accident, but now here you are again with a second chance to drive more carefully.
The point of this thought experiment is to do two things — to feel grateful that you are still in the middle of a particular event instead of at the end of it with an unfavorable outcome, and to put forth your best efforts so that this time this event ends with a favorable outcome. It’s a technique to shift your perspective about your current situation, to motivate you to align your current actions with your end goals.
When living life, imagine you have already lived it and it was full of regrets. What a relieve it is that here you are again, still alive, with the time and opportunity to live it for a little longer. This time, make sure to live every day in alignment with the things that matter most to you, do everything within your control to limit the number of regrets you will have in the end. Live as if it is your second chance after an unfavorable first one.
Now, as a young and privileged person, I acknowledge that it is easy for me to say these things. There are many people who are currently in much worse situations than me, who may rightfully argue that they are living through what I have just described as an “unfavorable first attempt”. Although my life experiences are so far limited, I tend to think that every bad situation has the possibility to be even worse.
Since you are reading this article (which I appreciate immensely), then at the very least you are still alive and able to intake and process information. You have at least a working set of heart, brain, eyes or ears, and time left to experience this reality. These are things that about a hundred billion other humans have already lost their chances of having, and it’s, in my opinion, important to make the most out of them while we still can.
Thank you for taking time out of your life to read something I have written. It means incredibly much to me and I hope you think it was worth it.
Interested to discuss more? Please email me!