Yesterday I came as close as I ever want to get to killing a man at work. One little flick of my wrist and 1800 tons of machine would have ended my friend Neal. Luckily I felt this very slight shudder and stopped swinging. I had pushed a 70 ton bulldozer 6 meters and hadn't even felt it till it wedged up against my tracks. Neal had to kick in the window of his dozer to get out. If I hadn't stopped, or if I had been swinging even a touch faster . . .
That kind of thing can really shake you up. And I did everything right. That's actually worse than if I had been somehow negligent- it means shitty things can happen for no reason. Neal wasn't hurt, and he kept telling me not to feel bad, that it wasn't my fault, but I kept thinking what if. But you know, what-ifs are a kind of mental virus. There is no what-if, there is only what happened, and nothing you can do about it. In this case what happened was we both got to go home alive at the end of the day. Therefore, instead of feeling terrible, we should feel elated, excited, alive.
At least that's what I'm trying to convince myself of. Today I think I lost that battle. But tomorrow I'll go have a beer with Neal and we'll toast life and laugh, and not worry about what-ifs.