Are there accidents? Really.

Back in a more argumentative time of my life I would sometimes, just for fun, become the devil’s advocate. One of my favorite topics was accidents. I would argue that there is no such thing as an accident.

Naturally, the brunt of my argument would produce examples of when they were sitting at a stop light and got rear ended. Or a time when the clock’s battery was depleted causing the clock to be off. The slow clock caused them to be late for an important meeting. I had lots of good arguments but eventually they all boiled down to the following four thoughts...

• Thought 1. What did I do to create this situation? The law of what goes around, comes around is absolute. See my blog entry on Taking Responsibility.
• Thought 2. What was my focus? When I think about what would happen if I dropped the glass, the probability of spilt milk is pretty big.
• Thought 3. Repetition leads to patterns, be they good or bad. Habits help to create a similar situation. If the situation is marginal, then marginal things happen.
• Thought 4. I’m just accident prone. See my blog entry on Does Luck Exist?...

An important sidebar is that when I really understood the above thoughts, I stopped arguing. Yep, eventually I reached a point where I could care less if people believed in accidents. I didn’t reach that point out of boredom, lack of interest or because I stopped believing in my argument. I reached that point when I really believed in my argument!

In any event, when we I am absolutely honest with myself, I can trace the accident back to one or more of the above thoughts. Sometimes it requires some flexibility in interpretation without becoming too literal. For instance If I got rear ended, how many times have I blindsided another person in an argument? Or, what was the eventual result of the missed meeting? Perhaps the meeting was non eventful and it was far more important for me to attend to other matters. Or, the real reason for the broken leg was to slow down and pay more attention to stress levels.

Hopefully, at least there is something to think about. The essence of my thoughts boil down to the following: When I take responsibility for everything that happens in my life, I have no accidents!

What do you think?

Sam