An unexpectedly cheap lesson

We have discussed preciously the far reaching implications of the Fundamental Attribution Error (bad name if there is one), which allows us to mentally take credit for any "favorable" outcome while exonerating us from the adverse ones. When this gets compounded with a situation of privilege, it can turn into a serious risk of getting "cocky", frequently verbalized as one of my most derided mottoes: "where there's a will, there's a way". When you are blindly enjoying the support of your environment it is very easy to conclude that all you have to do is set your mind to whatever you are doing, but you are not aware of the contribution that you are receiving from your entourage and even how much luck is involved in the process. And any obstacle or difficulty can be blamed on the unexpected, not to your carelessness a lack of planning.

The misleading corollary is that anybody else who is not attaining their goals is simply at fault of not willing it with enough intensity, although to anyone with a modicum of objectivity would be obvious that their situation is substantially less supportive and the hurdles for success much higher. Of course, there is always karma, and when one spends their life criticizing the weaknesses of character of the people around them, the chances are that life will eventually catch up and put them in a position where they cannot honestly advocate for the decisive contribution of a strong will. This is precisely what happened to my brother just a few days ago.

Photo: Tristan Martin

Dave had been out and about with his work colleagues celebrating holidays (admittedly, a bit early, but that is the way to avoid clashes with family commitments). As they were about to call it a night and my brother was driving his friends home, he was involved in a an extremely small traffic accident. He was coming out of a side love in the parking lot when another driver hit him from the side at a speed which was obviously not appropriate for the driving conditions. Fortunately nobody got hurt and, under normal circumstances that would have been the end of the story. Unfortunately, Dave had drunk a couple of glasses of wine so, even if we was not obviously inebriated, he had just enough alcohol in his blood to just barely exceed the legal limit. This had two extremely negative consequences: first, even if the other driver was obviously at fault for driving so fast, the fact that he had not drunk almost automatically made my brother the culprit; second, the coverage of the insurance was likely to be sparse or even non-existent when driving under the influence of alcohol, which could potentially mean his financial bankruptcy.

It is needless to say how appalled he was with the situation. He suddenly realized how long he had been enjoying the benefits of an overly favorable collection of circumstances and attributed every single one of his achievements to himself, completely disregarding the undeniable contribution of his environment. He realized that his relentless confidence in his own capabilities was largely unfounded and that he should not take his luck for granted, since there are so many ways in which life could go wrong.

Ultimately, he realized how careless and irresponsible he had been now that he had a daughter. For many years he had been drifting aimlessly through life, but that had never been too much of a problem because he could always rely on his own strength to pull out. But now that he has a child of his own the situation is radically different, because he cannot demand that kind of sacrifices from anybody else, particularly when it all circles back to us poor choices or is lack of direction. Facing eight months of driving ban and the potential ruin really shook his world. Still, his proverbial luck kicked in to save the day.

It turns out that his blood alcohol level was close enough to the limit that, even if it was above the limit during the police examination, once the tolerance of the device was taken into account the value jumped just below, so his criminal behavior suddenly became a misdemeanor and what could have been crippling consequences were just limited to a couple of days in hell. He will not be summarily processed and sentenced, and when the court ruling comes on his case in several months, chances are that he will even be compensated for the substantial damages to his car, as he normally would have if he had not drunk. Fortunately, the teachings of the ordeal will not be all lost.

The most immediate consequence of the incident is that he has already started to change his dangerously overconfident life. To start he has decided not to replace the damaged car, and instead have worked out a schedule that will work for him and his wife to drive together to work at the cost of expanding their daughter's time in daycare for a couple of hours. But I am pretty sure that the changes will not end there, because he has now realized how close he has been cutting things in the last couple of years, and that he cannot continue that way lest things turn out completely wrong.

I have to admit that I have a divided heart right now: on the one hand it is painful to see what he has gone through, even if the outcome is undoubtedly close to the mildest it could have been, on the other hand, I have to recognize that all his boasting was slowly getting on my nerves, so a lesson in humility serves him good, particularly if it can be learned at such a cheap price. Have a good evening.