Has your life ever changed by accident?

Brother died when I was four.

Sexually molested.

Broke up with a boyfriend and a friend prevented us from reconnecting a year later. I only found out many years after.

Met future husband in England while hitchhiking.

Quit my job in family business and got a job back in my career as a librarian by a chance encounter four days later.

Husband walked out on me and I learned to live independently.

Broke my ankle and learned to;lean on my support system.

Was meeting a friend for lunch and she was going to a Unitarian meeting first so I went with her.

My whole life has been the result of accidents. Except my pregnancies – they were planned!

I’ve had a number of life changing events, but I would not call most of them accidents. Mostly they were just unexpected events.

The day a van hit me changed the rest of my life dramatically.

Finding out that I have multiple sclerosis was one of the biggest life changers but a relief to find out what was going on at the same time.
It’s not all bad though as you learn how strong (or weak, depending on one’s outlook) you are.
Other life changers were the deaths of loved family and friends.

There are certainly many inflection points in life. If you can identify where they tend to pop up you can guide your future somewhat. For the most part each day passes without consequence until you hit one of these points. My last job change came down to clicking Yes or no on a web page. I was on the fence pretty hard. Talk about a click with heavy consequences. I clicked “yes” and my whole life changed and can be traced back to that instant.

I didn’t get into the grad school I wanted to. So I changed outlook, went to a different grad school in a totally different field, and have done that for 40 years. And I like what I do every day,

Worked out perfectly.

I’m convinced that my life has been one of rather extraordinary fortunate coincidences. In fact, whenever I think about this, I get an eerie feeling that there are just too many of these to be considered merely coincidental. Nothing spectacular like winning the lottery, but subtle things you don’t usually think about. And when you stack them up, it’s difficult to conclude that the trend is not somehow directed. It puzzles me, but I dwell on it frequently in what should be my “declining years”. I would of course prefer to believe myself beyond superstition, but such concepts as protective spells or guardian angels drift through my thoughts more than I usually care to admit.

@Stanley, have you seen the movie Contact?

The Jodie Foster movie? yes more than once.

Just wondering if you identify with her character, as if someone unknown to you could be clearing your path.

Identify with her character? The geek driven by an all consuming compassion to the exclusion of all else? She was both noble and innocent without a hint of cynicism or suspicion about the dynamics on the workings of the world. That ain’t me. Mine is more about the path being cleared and smoothed for a wastrel in a world so disjointed and unfair that even a useless libertine can recognize it for what it is. Hold on a sec. Libertine is too extreme. But I don’t understand it, and find it irritating to catch myself thinking about such stuff. It’s a relief to recognize the process for the selfish compulsion it in fact is. It is the fear that I may be called to account for the great gifts squandered from the gods in which I neither believe nor understand.

I was referring to her mysterious benefactor in the sky. Did you see the movie, or sleep through it?