What If…

So it’s about midnight…Today was a beautiful day…sunny, 75 degrees, Light wind…Beautiful spring day in Tennessee… That was just a few hours ago…It’s pouring rain outside now and in typical, Aaron Davis fashion, I had the atypical inclination to go outside to the hot tub and take a hot dip in the cold rain…

Sitting there, relaxing, thinking about nothing but the random thoughts that would jump in and out of my head and occasionally noticing the cold drop of water dripping from my rain drenched hair down my face, I sat there in a state of “Selah”…then in the distance a familiar sound grabbed my attention…I could faintly hear them… A sound that once accompanied, even defined, a daily part of my existence…Sirens from emergency vehicles. So many times, I’d been the driver of that vehicle running the blue lights and sirens…

Experience told me that they were responding to what was probably a traffic accident resulting from the inclement weather and in typical fashion, I said a prayer for the person(s) that they were responding to…Slowly the sirens became louder and louder as they passed my house from a parallel street and I could see the blue lights reflecting off of the rain in the sky. For some reason this visual triggered a flashback from a conversation that I had with a man this afternoon.

Referring to the sequence of events leading up to my law enforcement medical retirement, he asked me…”Aaron, Do you ever wish you had pulled the trigger”? I responded, “Lately, EVERYDAY…”

For those less familiar with the circumstances, I was surfing at about 45 mph on the hood of my stolen police car after having an attempt made on my life by the two men who were driving and trying desperately to shake me off of the hood…With my gun in one hand and the fingers of my other hand clinging ever so tightly to the hood of the car right in front of the windshield wipers, I was faced with two options…Shoot the driver, or Jump off the hood of the car at 45 mph… Over and over again I kept saying to myself, “shoot him or jump” as the vehicle continued to accelerate and then I heard a voice…(I don’t know if it was audible but it seemed so at the time) yelling, “JUMP!!!”…So that’s what I did…and when I did, I hit my head on the road and the injuries to my inner ears from hitting my head so hard forced me into a medical retirement ending a very successful and fulfilling career in law enforcement as a Detective Sergeant and SWAT team member…

It’s strange how things can change like the weather…sunny and 75 to a cold downpour… In a matter of minutes on Dec 14, 2006 my life changed like the Tennessee climate, and I can’t help but wonder, “what if”?

I guess one thing is for sure…It only takes a second for life to take a TOTALLY different turn… Whoever it was that those sirens were responding for tonight had one of those unexpected/unplanned moments…even if they walked away without a scratch, the fact remains, they were a “what if” away from a complete life change…If they walked away at all…

What if tomorrow your weather changed? What if your sky’s went black all together? What would you have done differently today if you knew that tomorrow was not going to be, or that life as you knew it would drastically change?

I contemplated these thoughts over and over for months after my incident and I repeatedly found myself feeling an urgency to make EVERY DAY COUNT and not allow for wasted days and opportunities. In the end, your only “value” comes from who you were to and for others…

I’m not going to lie, life has been a real roller coaster since my “weather change”… and I can’t say I understand or can make sense of a lot of it right now…and sometimes I wonder how life for me would be different if I had taken that kids life instead of jumping off the hood…But truth be told, I’ve come to understand that you’ll never accept your current reality and move forward as long as you live in the memory of “what if”…

It is what it is, Ya know? “Life”…It is what it is…I can’t change the past…I only have the power to influence the future…So, in those circumstances, you press on!

I believe your very existence is proof that God still has a purpose for you…so if you’re breathing, then get busy living and figuring out what that purpose is all about…Life’s too short even if you live to be 99 (Just ask the 98 year old)…

I guess I am just encouraging everyone who reads this to make every day count and make sure that you don’t leave this life with regrets (especially when it comes to how you interacted with people and relationships)… When I realized how close I came to dying, it really made me evaluate how I had “lived” my life before that day. Take my advice, Don’t wait til you die (or almost die) to weigh the importance of yesterday and tomorrow…

The most important “what if” comes from your future… “What if” you died with the regrets from yesterday and had no opportunity to change them tomorrow? Get busy livin!