Last Thursday, I was in a car accident with a close friend. We survived unharmed. Her car was totaled.

It had been raining that night, and we were running late to meet some other friends for a dinner party. As she approached the on-ramp, we hit a pothole. She swerved several times, trying to regain control of the car. We skidded to the left, struck a cement retaining wall, then did a 180-degree turn across three lanes of traffic and hit a second cement wall. Smoke poured from the engine, and gas leaked from below. We looked at each other. We were fine. We were calm. We were thankful.

In the split second before hitting the first wall, I grabbed Jennie's hand, we looked into each other's eyes and braced. "Are you OK?" I asked. "Yes," she replied, "but we're still crashing."

During the entire crash, we didn't see another car and were never in any danger of hitting anything but the cement walls. Immediately after, as we scrambled from the car to safety along the underpass, we noticed how heavy the traffic was--and how fast the cars were traveling. We were going at least 45 mph; within speed limits and slow enough that we would have been OK traveling that road under other circumstances. She and I have each taken that road countless times before.

Truth be told, although we continued on to our dinner party (which had a decidedly different tone), we were quite shaken up, and I still am not fully back to "normal." My body, though uninjured, was stiff and sore. I awoke several times those first nights with a start, having relived the accident in my dreams. As I tried to nap the day after the crash, my body felt like it was swerving.

I've cried, I've panicked, I've pondered the "what-ifs." It replays in my mind, in slow motion. And I continue to ask myself: "And did you get what you wanted from this life?" It comes from an epitaph my friend--the same one I visited in Turkey, the same one who was in the accident--recited as we shared a bottle of wine with friends just a couple of nights before the crash.

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

With an undergrad degree in creative writing, Jennie always knows just the right words for any occasion. And on this night, as we discussed the future with old friends, she reached for Raymond Carver's epitaph, found on a slip of paper after his death and nearly discarded.

So, indulge me for a moment, as I think about how lucky I am. A dear friend died in a car accident in high school. Several other friends were badly injured in wrecks. My mother has endured 20 years of excruciating back pain due to a car accident. I don't like being in a car, and I avoid driving whenever I can. Yet I walked away from the car calm and healthy, with a deeper sense of trust for my friend. I thanked the universe, called my family to tell them I loved them, and hugged my friend tightly.

I didn't need to ask myself that question. But my answer would be that yes, I did. I do. Every day, I get what I wanted from this life. I love and am loved. I am alive.

Why am I relaying this story to you here, on this blog about healthy living? Well, because without "living," the "healthy" part doesn't matter.

There were times in my life where I simply went through the motions, hoping and praying that the future would arrive quickly and cause my problems to vanish. Today, I realize how precious each and every moment is--even the bad ones.

How many times have you put something off for tomorrow? Do you repeatedly promise to start your new life next week? Ever walk through life in a fog?

Don't wait. Start now. You can't change everything, but you can take the first step.

Henry Miller said it best: "The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware."

Be aware. Be alive.

Have you ever had an experience that really left you thankful to be alive? What was your reaction?