When I woke up with the full realization that I was paralyzed, my mind was deluged with questions, speculations, fears and regrets. Judging from the faint light though window blinds, it was still early dawn. I was relieved no one else was in the room because I needed time alone to think.

One of the earliest and most reoccurring thoughts was simply why? I felt the more literal and simplistic answers such as bad luck or bad choices the least satisfying and hardest to accept, and turned my attention towards religion. I wasn’t a deeply religious person before the crash but did hold some hope for the existence of karma. But it’s easier to understand in the abstract how one’s circumstances could be the result of actions in a past life or how current actions affect future incarnations. When one suddenly becomes quadriplegic, such knowledge is of little comfort though it did provide an explanation.

Were I Christian I’d probably want to believe god works in mysterious ways or that my catastrophic injury was part of a master plan. Conversely, I could imagine becoming so disillusioned that I rejected my faith and now characterized god as cruel or indifferent. But if by some miracle I was completely healed, then god would once again be loving and merciful. Recognizing the futility of such magical thinking, I found it comforting nevertheless. I visualized being back home as if my life had never been disrupted. Perhaps that was my reality in an alternate timeline or parallel universe? As much as I wanted to escape into fantasy, I knew I had to focus on the present.

No matter how I felt about my situation, the reality is that it happened and there might not be a satisfying explanation. I could relate to existentialists who, after confronting the incomprehensible nature of existence, sought to create their own meaning. I was also more inclined to believe in the Gnostic concept of a malicious demiurge as creator of a corrupted material world. As hard as it might be to accept, the universe is chaotic and owes us nothing.