The Wisest One in the Room by Thomas Gilovich & Lee Ross

Author:Thomas Gilovich & Lee Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press

Part 2

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WISDOM APPLIED

6

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The Happiest One in the Room

On the evening of October 14, 1993, Mark Zupan and a group of teammates on Florida Atlantic University’s soccer team went out drinking at Dirty Moe’s, a bar that catered to the college crowd with low-priced drinks and a lax approach to keeping minors at bay. After downing a number of free drinks from fans who had been at the game, Zupan said he was feeling “shit-housed” and left the bar around midnight looking for a place to sleep it off. He chose the back of his friend’s pickup truck.

His friend, Chris Igoe, was not feeling so well himself at that point. He passed out in the bar and was rustled awake by a bouncer at 2:00 a.m. and told the bar was closing and he had to leave. He got into his truck, convincing himself that he could safely drive the two miles to his dorm. He couldn’t. He took an exit off I-95 at too great a speed and lost control of his truck, slamming it into a fence. The collision catapulted Zupan out of the truck and into a drainage canal.

Zupan lay in the brackish water, unable to move or feel anything in his legs. Igoe, not knowing that Zupan had been lying asleep in the back of his truck, was unaware of his friend’s misfortune. So when an off-duty police officer handcuffed Igoe and took him away and a tow-truck driver took away Igoe’s vehicle, Zupan was left lying in the ditch, his arm clinging around a branch to keep his head above water. When he was finally discovered the following day, he was rushed to the hospital, where a devastating diagnosis was delivered: His spine was severely damaged and he would spend the rest of his life as a paraplegic.

You might imagine that anyone suffering such a fate would sink into a deep depression, never to achieve the same level of happiness again. But Zupan, who went on to become a champion wheelchair rugby player, doesn’t see it that way. Instead, he maintains that:

In truth, my accident has been the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I’m not trying to be glib when I say this, or rationalize my mistakes, or offer you a steaming bowl of bullshit-flavored Chicken Soup for the Soul. What I am saying is that it has been the single most defining event of my life. And without it, I wouldn’t have seen the things I’ve seen, done the things I’ve done and met so many incredible people. I wouldn’t have become a world-class athlete. I wouldn’t have come to understand my friends and family the way I do, and feel the kind of love they have for me and I have for them.1

Zupan’s capacity to make the most of life since his traumatic accident is a remarkable triumph of the human spirit. Many people say they “would rather die” than live as a paraplegic. But while

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