How does one express why a certain event was life altering? It’s not as simple as it sounds, considering the different things we each consider to hold significance. For example, to your average fisherman, a life altering experience might be catching the big one which had once gotten away. For me, the movie geek, that counts for something which lands firmly between diddly and squat. The event I’m about to describe (hold your horses, I’m getting there) altered my life. Had it happened to you, you might have been able to brush it off as just another story to tell.

About three years ago I was in a car accident. Now, I don’t mean I was driving home and some dumb schmuck rear-ended me. I mean I was walking home from work one evening when a young man decided to use me for a speed bump. I was smeared across the road for about ten yards, breaking most of the bones in my body. After the paramedics got there and scooped up what was left of me, surgeons spent eight hours putting me back together. I spent the next seven months learning how to walk again since my right leg had been completely destroyed and reassembled, and I’d suffered a massive head wound. Needless to say, some changes occurred in my life during and following these events.

I woke up from my coma about three weeks after the event. The next month was spent recovering from the shock and confusion one experiences upon having their internal organs placed on public display. Was I angry about what had happened? Not really. I couldn’t very well fault the driver, since he’d stopped to help in his own panicked sort of way. Sure, I found the idea of being asleep for three weeks more than a little disconcerting, but one’s generally happy to have woken up at all from such a state.

I’ve always had a knack for accepting things that happen and dealing with them, and this is exactly what I did here. I spent months trudging through physical, mental, and psychological therapy. The doctors said my body was healing at a remarkable rate (knew all that milk would come in handy some day), and what had at first appeared to be a serious brain injury turned out to be more or less superficial (though some would argue otherwise). As for psychological and emotional wounds, the head shrinkers unanimously decided that I was dealing with things in a way they seldom encountered. You see, most people who suffer through a near death experience react in one of two ways: either they become very depressed, unable to move on with their lives due to shock or self-pity; or they experience some form of religious epiphany and become exceedingly irritating in the eyes of the community at large. Me, I took the whole thing as a wake up call of the non-religious variety.

Why am I telling you this? No, it’s not for shock value - though that’s certainly a delightful bonus. I’m telling you this because an event like that changes one’s perceptions on life. It makes you re-examine how you’ve been living and what you’ll have left behind when you die. When this happened I was flunking school, working a menial job, and basically lounging through life. Upon realizing how close I’d come to buying the proverbial farm, I turned things around. I got a decent job, improved my grades, and, well okay, I’m still lounging through life. That’s not the point though. The point is, I’m hoping you won’t have to suffer through a near death experience to change your life if it’s stuck in a rut. If your life is great right now, and you have no regrets, terrific. To the other 99% of you, sit back and take stock of where you’re going in life. If you feel you’re heading nowhere at break-neck speeds, think about where you want to go and what it’s going to take to get there. Then, rather than just thinking about these things, put them into action. That way, if some car decides it wants to wrestle you one of these days, your last thoughts won’t be “I’ve wasted my life.”