Seeing the good in an accident

So I had a little accident on my way home today; actually, it was as I was just pulling out of the parking lot at work.  It was unclear who was at fault, if I side-swiped the guy or if he hit me.  What was clear as I pulled over to check the damage, all too clear, was that the housing for the driver's side flasher was dangling and I had no idea how I would drive home with it like that.  As soon as he saw my distress, the guy that I'd just had an accident with went over to his truck and rummaged around for what seemed like a very long time.  He came back with a drill, a few screws and proceeded to re-install the smashed housing.  He said it had taken him so long because he was looking for a light bulb for my flasher; he then apologized for not having one!

On my way home, still a bit shaken and not sure what had just happened, I had to laugh.  Leave it to me to get into an accident with a guy that had all the right equipment and actually knew how to take care of my most pressing problem! 

I guess this accident was meant to teach me a lesson.  I could have fretted all the way home, berated myself for not paying better attention to the road, or convinced myself that this situation was worse that it actually was, but instead I saw that it wasn't that bad, after all no one was injured, and I even got a good laugh out of it.  How nice would it be to take every negative situation this lightly?  Seeing the good in it sure helped make this incident a whole lot easier to take.

Maybe that's the answer... instead of automatically getting carried off by the bad in a situation, why not stop for a second and see if there might be another way to look at it.  Trying to see it in a better light - not necessarily seeing the good in it, but letting go of the bad a bit - might actually help us handle things better.  It made enough of a difference to me today that I fully intend to try this again... but hopefully I won't have to too soon :)