Opportunity Lost or Tragedy Averted?

I woke up this morning to pouring rain and thunder. Since I can't use an umbrella due to a disability, I cancelled Access Link, which would have taken me food shopping, and rescheduled for tomorrow.

An hour later, the sun came out.

I hate shopping on the week-end. It's crowded, hard to get a motorized cart, and waiting for a cab while my Hagen Daz melts does nothing for my disposition.

Whenever I'm annoyed and second-guessing, I think about a friend of my Dad's, a truck driver, who swerved on wet pavement to avoid a collision and flipped his truck. He was pinned underneath and his ankle was shattered. The doctors were amazed that he walked again and went back to driving for a living. Determination and faith paid off. He was a gutsy guy.

He taught me a good lesson. I remember him talking about that day and musing that if he'd left home a minute earlier or later he wouldn't have been in the path of the other vehicle and the accident might not have happened; a tragedy would have been averted, months of pain and therapy cancelled out in a wink.

But--

why do we always tend to think in terms of opportunity lost? The job we didn't get, the love of our life who got away, the lottery ticket a number shy of a million dollars. Always a bridesmaid we complain, never a bride.

What about tragedies averted? Does it take more imagination than we possess to envisage a brick that wasn't hurled through our windshield, a divorce lawyer we didn't have to pay because we got dumped, temptations and vices we avoided because we never became rich enough to afford them?

Something really strange happened right after I finished writing this piece. My neighbor's gutter, over-full due to the storm, crashed down onto their half finished back porch. Fortunately, the carpenter was out to lunch. How 'bout that?