When I was in High School, the headmaster on one unforgettable occasion came to the classroom and asked my friend Malcolm to go to his office. Malcolm had just left the room when the headmaster came back and asked me to go to his office as well. I became very anxious.

Malcolm and I had just been talking about his mum and dad who were on their way to Sydney. He told me how he had left the garbage can in the middle of the driveway and his dad had backed over it. That incident had delayed everyone by some 5 minutes and although inconvenient didn't appear at all disastrous.

When I arrived at the headmaster's office there were two policeman waiting. Malcolm and I were ushered in and asked to sit down. The headmaster then told Malcolm that both his parents had just been killed in a fatal road accident and his sister was not expected to live. Absurd as it might sound, Malcolm later said his whole life had changed because of that garbage can and that he had somehow been responsible for his parent's death!

He reckoned the delay his father experienced when he backed over that garbage can had become fatal. If he had left 5 minutes earlier he would never had been anywhere near the truck which had passed over to the wrong side of the road and headlong into his dad's car. Malcolm felt his neglect in leaving the garbage can in the middle of the driveway, circumstantially created the fatal coincidence of the family car and the truck being precisely in the wrong place at he wrong time. Was Malcolm correct?

Life is full of coincidences and chances. No doubt you have many stories to tell as well about how "good luck" and "bad luck" can change the whole direction of our lives. Accidents of any type by their very nature are the unpredictable, unexpected, unavoidable and uncontrollable events which have us all feeling vulnerable. Living it seems is risky.

Statisticians will tell you the "probability factor" of accidents associated with driving, flying, working and so on. Yet we all continue to do these things. Lotto promotions however will never tell you the statistical probability of winning the 5 million jackpot. If we knew we would more then likely - keep buying tickets!

Ultimately it all comes down to how we see our circumstances. Is life rigidly preplanned and whatever "happens" is fate? Are our lives at the mercy of chances and coincidences, whether good or bad, so we really have to wait and see what happens? How much control do we really have over our circumstances?

Malcolm when he left the garbage can in the driveway had no way of knowing that the delay this caused, did circumstantially contribute to his parent's fatal accident. With hindsight we all see things differently and may, as Malcolm did, wish we had acted differently as well. But on that fateful day for Malcolm, the truck driver may also have been delayed by his son leaving the garbage can (or whatever) in the drive way too. We live with such coincidences and chances, but we are not responsible for them. That is why they exist!

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