I realized that the driver was not paying attention, that I was going to be hit, and hit hard. I knew that given his speed and the fact that I was nose-to-rear with the car stopped in front of me, I was in great danger. I realized, in that moment, that I might die. “I looked down at my hands clenched on the steering wheel. I hadn’t consciously tightened them; this was my natural state, and this is how I lived life. I decided that I did not want to live that way, nor did I want to die that way. I closed my eyes, took a breath, and dropped my hands to my side. I let go. I surrendered to life, and to death. Then I was hit with enormous force. “When the movement and noise stopped, I opened my eyes. I was fine. The car in front of me was wrecked, the car behind me was demolished. My car was compacted like an accordion. “The police told me I was lucky I had relaxed, for muscle tension increases the likelihood of severe injury. I walked away feeling that I had been given a gift. The gift wasn’t just that I had survived unhurt, it was greater than that. I saw how I had been living life and was given the opportunity to change. I had held life with a clenched fist, but now I realized that I could hold it in my open hand, as if it were a feather resting on my palm. I realized that if I could relax enough to release my fear in the face of death, I could now truly enjoy life. In that moment, I felt more connected to myself than I ever had before.

And, as a result of choosing to be genuinely grateful for all that I had, unconditionally accepting of all that I didn’t, and accepting total responsibility for creating all that I wanted, this potentially devastating car accident ultimately became one of the best things that ever happened to me.

After being bombarded endlessly by road-safety propaganda it was almost a relief to find myself in an actual accident.

As the crash was occurring, I remember that I felt no fear although I was obviously concerned for the people in cars that were headed in my direction. I simply just acknowledged to myself that I've had a good life and I would soon have to say goodbye to all of it in a matter of seconds.

In a fast German car
I'm amazed that I survived An airbag saved my life

I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed-reading accident. I hit a bookmark

The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.

I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed reading accident. I hit a book mark and flew across the room.

Typically, by doing what comes naturally to us, we fail to account for our weaknesses, which leads us to crash. What happens after we crash is most important. Successful people change in ways that allow them to continue to take advantage of their strengths while compensating for their weaknesses and unsuccessful people don’t.

I pointed to the side of the road and then I pulled over and parked. When the guy got out of the car he was stripped to the waist. A typical young macho stud. He put his face within two inches of mine, and he was telling me what I was and what he was going to do to me. So I did the natural thing. I reached in and got a headlock on him, and I had him very firmly while he thrashed around. I felt I was doing just fine because I had stopped what was going on, but his girlfriend decided that he wasn't doing very well. So she ran and jumped on us. They both fell on top of me and my head crashed into the pavement. I landed on my left ear, got a hairline fracture and concussion. [...]
It was like some kind of nether world. Most of the time I didn't know where I was. Like I'd wake up and find I.V. units in my arm, and I'd rip 'em out and say, "What kind of a hotel is this? You tell them I'm never coming here again." [...]
When I came home from the hospital I was having terrible nightmares every night, sometimes to the point where I started not wanting to go to sleep. And I still have occasional migraines, dry eyes and short-term memory loss. [...] If I discovered anything in that strange, 10-month period of recovery, it's that music is the one thing that makes me sane.

I was run over by the truth one day.
Ever since the accident I've walked this way

All I saw was the dame standing there in the glare of the headlights waving her arms like a huge puppet and the curse I spit out filled the car and my own ears. I wrenched the wheel over, felt the rear end start to slide, brought it out with a splash of power and almost ran up the side of a cliff as the car fishtailed. The brakes bit in, gouging a furrow in the shoulder, then jumped to the pavement and held.
Somehow I had managed a sweeping curve around the babe. For a few seconds she had been living on stolen time because instead of getting out of the way she had tried to stay in the beam of the headlights. I sat there and let myself shake. The butt that had fallen out of my mouth had burned a hole in the leg of my pants and I flipped it out the window. The stink of burned rubber and brake lining hung in the air like smoke and I was thinking of every damn thing I ever wanted to say to a hairbrained woman so I could have it ready when I got my hands on her.
That was as far as I got. She was there in the car beside me, the door slammed shut and she said, "Thanks, mister."

Despite a number of near misses, I came through the war unscathed. In Tunisia a shell hit my vehicle but without harm to me, and in Sicily an exploding mine blew up my vehicle, but I was thrown clear. On the Roer River in Germany, just as I got out of my Jeep and entered a company command post, a mortar shell struck my vehicle. In the Remagen bridgehead on the Rhine a shell demolished a latrine moments after I had departed. Somehow none of the enemy shells had my number.

"I have a long history of crashes," Diva says as she picks up her tape recorder to hear a part of her song about her "crash history." I hit a bus once, my car was completely destroyed. Once again, I had such an accident that even the car's tape recorder failed.