We’re all one bad day away from sabotaging our lives

Jason Gutierrez
2 min readJan 6, 2022

Yesterday, I read a gutwrenching news story about a North Carolina State Highway Patrol officer who had more than a really bad day.

He was on his way to help his brother, also a state trooper, with a traffic stop when he lost control of his vehicle, hit his brother’s vehicle, which then slammed into his brother and the detainee who were standing off to the side of the road.

The detainee, 26-year-old Dusty Luke Beck, was pronounced dead on the spot. The brother, John Horton, was rushed to a hospital where he later passed from his injuries.

No one woke up that morning thinking something bad was going to happen. It was just another typical, pants-on-one-leg-at-a-time kind of day.

Until it wasn’t.

Those types of stories always break my heart and touch my soul in a place that makes me feel wildly vulnerable.

I mean, things like that could literally happen to anyone.

We’re all one — literally just one — lapse in judgment, bad day, or whatever away from sabotaging our lives and it’s terrifying.

Wake up. Show gratitude for what you have. Be f*cking happy. You never know when it’ll be lost in an instant.

News story here: https://www.yahoo.com/now/state-trooper-dies-brothers-vehicle-182915931.html

This post was created with Typeshare

--

--

Jason Gutierrez

Engineer. Papa. Each week, I share short essays and stories on careers, life, and the creative process 🖊: https://parttimewriting.beehiiv.com/subscribe