Whether you have lived through a traumatic event or have been lucky enough to never had anything extremely unlucky happen to you, this book will change the way you look at life.
We all have heard stories of people being in the wrong spot at the wrong time or being saved from death by the tiniest of coincidences.
In this book, Leigh explores several well-known tragedies through the protagonists, witnesses and those left behind. Then, she goes a step further and examines their beliefs around life, death, fate versus chance and whether their perspective had evolved since these experiences.
Weaving stories with research, sadness with hope and resilience, we are left with many wisdom pearls throughout the book.
My favourite is:
If we ask, “why did this happen to me?” when something terrible happens, we should also be willing to ask it when something good happens.
And following this logic, we should also be willing to ask, “why not me?”. What makes us feel so exceptional as to deserve to live tragedy-free forever?
This question got me very curious, and whilst looking around, I found this TED talk from the neuroscientist Tali Sharot. In it, she explains that we tend to accept bad odds for others but conveniently, not for ourselves. It is worth watching.
Leigh also points to some interesting research done to predict how people cope after a life-changing event.
It turns out that those who feel they couldn’t have avoided the event deal better with it.
Those doing something they rarely do tend to get stuck in the “if only…”.
And people that blame others also have more trouble dealing with the consequences.
In about 30-80% of the cases, we can experience profound personal growth. This, explains remarks like “The cancer was the best thing that happened to me”
The main message of this book is to accept that we don’t know what is around the corner and that we should be grateful for all our “ordinary days”.
I highly recommend this book to everyone, even if your life has so far been a walk in the park.