I was sitting at my desk, minding my business when our receptionist pulled my boss out of a closed door conference call. One of the newest recruiters in our office was on the phone. This would not have registered if I had not overheard the dialog:
"Totaled?"
"was anyone hurt?"
"yeah, whatever you need to do, take care of it, don't worry about it..."
Truly ironic because this person was on his way to - of all things - pay on some traffic tickets in South Austin.
He showed up in the office a couple hours later with the stiff gait of someone who is clearly in pain, but is loathe to concede any more ground to calamity. Details began to emerge.
He was hurrying to run his errands and was talking to his mother on the phone when he ran the red light and collided with another car. I can't imagine anything worse for a parent than to hear their son or daughter get into an accident in mid phone conversation. It seems he was dazed and unconscious for a few moments and when he regained he faculties, he picked up the phone to hear his mother frantically screaming his name. Nobody else seems to have been seriously injured.
As he made a feeble attempt to pack up his laptop, I intervened. While I was putting his things together for him, I was also trying to convince him he needed to go to the doctor because if he is stiff now, he is going to be in much worse pain in the morning.
On the way down the elevator he was telling me that he needs to change the way he drives.
"Thats my new years resolution - I have to change the way I drive, it's causing too many problems..."
Perceiving it as a question, I told him of an article I had read years ago about a theory that people tend to maintain what they perceive as a constant level of risk in their life. When we are young, we do crazy things because we are so sheltered by our parents and relative lack of responsibility that we have room to be risky - we express it in different ways through extreme sports, casual hookups, various substances and behaviors but the idea is that based on what is happening at the core of our life, we will adjust our behaviors to maintain a comfortable risk profile.
I told him that I used to be a crazy driver, but over time, as I got married and had kids and had other elements of risk exposure (whether financial, emotional or physical), I ended up changing my driving habits over time until these days, I drive like a Sunday school teacher. I asked if he thought just wanting to change would be enough or if he thought he might have to look at the risk in his life differently and make some changes (especially now that he works only on commission).
OK, so it sounds a little preachy. I didn't sell it as preachy, I sold it as "this theory I heard about... what do you think?" and he liked it. He liked it a lot. It's just a theory, it's not hard science and it might not be true at all, but it feels true and sometimes that is enough.
