What unexpected event changed your life?

The key word in this column’s title is “unexpected.” Why?

We all have life events with expected outcomes. For example, two about-to-become parents have hopefully schooled themselves on baby care. They should have a sense of the challenges ahead beyond diaper management.

Though the birth of a child is not a surprise, it fails to make my unexpected life-changing event list. Some will disagree. I respect that viewpoint. But it’s a certainty a newborn will change the parents’ lives.

We can come up with examples of supposedly unexpected events that may lead to bad endings. Think of life-long tax dodgers. Those individuals may be surprised when the government catches up with them. But it shouldn’t be unexpected. As the refrain goes, “They should have seen it coming.” Scratch those “dodgers” from my list.

Also excluded are unforeseen catastrophes. One example of the latter is from the book “Alive.” It’s a true story of a Uruguayan rugby team’s plane crashing into the South American Andes Mountains in 1972. It took months for the surviving 16 of the plane’s 45 passenger to be rescued.

As food supplies began running out in the Andes wilderness with sub-zero temperatures, survivors faced eventual starvation. They had one option. And that was to eat the flesh of their perished colleagues. Which they did. As unexpected as this ordeal was, it doesn’t make my list.

Also failing to make my list also is the scenario depicted in the Tom Hanks’ movie “Cast Away.” Here too a plane goes down. Tom’s character survives four years on an uninhabited island. After his rescue he learned the love of his life had married. That is a double-dose unexpected catastrophic heart punch.

So, what’s my perception of unexpected life-changing events? You know as I’ve said that they exclude catastrophes as well as ones that are life-changing but expected, even subconsciously. My guess is that in the recesses of those tax dodgers’ minds there is a fear of being caught.

An unexpected life-changing event as I see it, is a moment in time when an occurrence gets you to see the world differently. It could be a spark that leads you into an unexpected new arena. Or to act on an idea you were considering. Often you remember that event for the rest of your life.

Is it possible we can have more than one life-changing unexpected event? Of course. But as a radio host recently warned listeners, “Be wary of trivializing every transition as an unexpected life- changing event.”

The host had a point. Conversely every day brings change. And no matter how infinitesimally small that change may be, the world differs each morning from the one you knew before. And you are not the same person you were yesterday. The latter is true. But it fails to meet my personal criteria for labeling these overnight transitions as unexpected life-changing events.

Moreover, when that radio program’s host gave me the idea for this column, I failed to appreciate how involved this topic is. I was surprised to see how much information there is online on life- changing events. The links run on and on covering varying accounts of situational human experiences including those from social, psychological, and environmental realms.

So, I’m going to keep it simple by sharing three of my unexpected life-changing events. And I’m asking readers to do an inventory of what theirs might be.

Two of my three life-changers resulted from being asked, “what were the most meaningful classes you took in school?”

In college there were courses every student had to take. One of them for me fell into the “fluff ” category. I would take it for one summer. That July and August were scorching. Our classroom in the bowels of our building lacked air-conditioning. But those sessions in art and music appreciation fortunately exposed me to a world I have lived in ... to this day.

My answer to what course served me best in my business career and since then might be a surprise. It was my typing class in senior of year of high school. I still see associates hunt-and-peck on their computers. And am I ever grateful for having chosen that typing elective class over whatever else was offered!

A third unexpected life-changing experience was a speech in 1997 I gave as the chair of the Board of Education to the staff and the students’ parents. I had just returned from a heart operation and spoke about the similarities between caregiving in health care and in the teaching profession.

The applause that followed was key to my pursuing speaking to groups as part of my consulting profession. It was indeed an unexpected life-changing event. I remember that day vividly as well as an educator’s handwritten note saying the presentation changed her life. Since then, no group has ever provided me again with the kind of response I got in that school’s auditorium.

Life is filled with unexpected changes. They help form who we are.