I lay on that road for what seemed like an eternity before some other travelers arrived and called for help. My foot had started to swell and I wasn’t quite sure what had just happened.

It was a clear and beautiful Saturday afternoon last September and I was on the way to a potluck. As I moved along the bumpy, rural road that runs between my house and Lawrence, I noticed a car entering the road from a hilltop driveway in the distance but immediately lost sight of it as I entered the base of a closer, smaller hill. As I crested the hill, it became horribly apparent that I had misread the situation.

In the other car I saw long, dark hair surrounding the slender face of a middle-aged woman. Her name was Michele Bird and she most likely died instantly when my little red Honda T-boned her Toyota Camry.

I’m a firm believer that we create our own reality and get what we want out of life. But after the crash I was forced to ask myself, “Why would I ask for so much physical pain?” Why would anyone ask to deal with the guilt over the death of that lady in the other car?

Even though I know what the police investigation proves — I am not responsible that she lost control of her car and ended up sliding toward me in my lane — I can’t help but feel guilty.

Besides pain and guilt, why would anyone ask for the fear associated with a highway collision? During the accident it was like I was a black hole watching the universe get sucked toward me in slow motion. I vividly remember my car collapsing to form a “V” that pointed right at me and bent around the passenger side of her car. Then the airbag deployed and beat me into place. The collision ended with a horn that wouldn’t stop beeping and my engine revving loudly. The airbag deflated, leaving a smoky haze and chemical smell.

I thought there might be a fire, so I undid my seat belt to get out of the car but my door wouldn’t open. My window was down, so I climbed out and fell to the ground. I tried to stand up but my right leg couldn’t hold my weight. It was like my ankle wasn’t there any more. To get to what seemed like a safe distance away, I dragged myself 30 feet down the road. As I lay there pulling pebbles out of my palms and from under my fingernails, I nursed my shattered ankle and wondered what had happened.

My right foot had been crammed up into my leg, forcing my ankle to dislocate to the point of being at a right angle to my foot and leg. Because I didn’t have the lap belt down in front of my pelvis, my seat belt was too high and cut my liver. I had a couple of fractured bones in my left foot and much of my upper body had been beaten black, blue and yellow.

The abdominal surgery came the day after the accident and caused the most pain, if for no other reason than the catheter the doctors installed. Two weeks later I was healthy enough to have ankle surgery, which resulted in pain similar to the pain before they reset my ankle on the day of the accident. If we get what we want out of life, then what was I getting out of this?

The accident gave me the wisdom of knowing that we are all responsible for each other’s well-being. We are responsible at any moment, but particularly when we drive a one-ton hunk of metal 50 or 60 miles per hour across a world full of fragile life. If we slip up, we can’t help but recognize how we are responsible for each other’s well-being. Even more importantly, I gained compassion.

Compassion is a virtue found in many world religions, like in my own Judeo-Christian tradition, and it’s central to the Buddhist and Taoist philosophies that reflect my adult spiritual views. In Taoism, compassion is considered one of humanity’s three “greatest treasures” next to patience and simplicity.

Since the accident, I readily empathize with people who are scared, in pain or wish they could go back and make things different. I have to take away something from the crash beside scars, and I take compassion.

I wish that I could go back and be the hero who rescues a lady stuck in a ditch instead of being another victim. But I know that the one thing we don’t get out of life, no matter how badly we want it, is the chance to go back and make things different. I’m not responsible for the crash, but I’m always responsible for the reality I create because I have to live with the results of my unconscious decisions.

Luckily for me, Taoism offers help for situations like this in chapter 58 of its essential text, the Tao Te Ching: “Good fortune, we say, can come from disaster. And the reverse is true as well. Who knows where all this will lead?”