One of the common things for people to do in situations that they don't want to be in is to play the "What if?" game.
What if I did X differently?
What if I did not do Y?
It is an important part of the human condition to examine what happens to you and learn from it, but, like with most of the human experience, it does have two sides.
One can be paralyzed with longing to change the past, or to figure out what one did wrong when there really wasn't anything that one did wrong.
Take, for example, October 24th, 1999.
My wife at the time and I were driving west on Washington Street in Indianapolis, intending to drive around 465 and talk after my birthday dinner at The Spaghetti Factory.
We stopped at a red light, and Cynthia looked up in time to see a truck not slowing down behind us. She took her foot off the brake and the truck hit us going about forty miles an hour. My seat collapsed, and my ex-wife smartly hit the brakes again before we were pushed into traffic.
I really think this was the event that breached my blood/brain barrier and began my MS.
However, after thinking about it a lot, there was really nothing I could have done to prevent it. I didn't do anything wrong. Cynthia probably saved our lives with he brake pedal trick, and the guy was drunk, which had nothing to do with either of us.
That does not make me think how it could have been different.
Rather than entertain fruitless wishing, I've moved past it. I am where I am. Now, where do I go from here?
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