We grew up in a different place, found ourselves working a different career, or, in more extreme cases, were born into a different family.
Sometimes, however, we are able to stop and remind ourselves to be grateful for the life we're living.
Something that is so much easier to do when you survive an experience that nearly cost you your life.
Redditor Jamestimes12 was curious to hear about people who survived experiences that should have, by all accounts, killed them, leading them to ask:
"What's your 'I should've died but didn't' story?"
"I cut trees for a living, and sometimes in this job you will hear something fall and you just pray it's not going to hit you or that it won't kill you."- Yeetmiester6719
"Slipped on ice, legs went forward and fell hitting the back of my head on the ice covered sidewalk - cracked my skull and got a concussion, but didn't know it yet."
"I got back up and tried to keep walking home, but I passed out - this time falling forward into the ground smashing my face, breaking my nose and a few teeth."
"I woke up about 30 minutes later and had to peel my face off my frozen pool of blood, stumbled home, and instinctively started running a bath to clean myself up."
"That's when my roommates saw me and had the good sense to call me an ambulance."
"Got rushed to surgery to fix my bleeding brain."- Metrochaka
"I attended Pukkelpop 2011, a festival that was hit by a super cell storm and completely destroyed within minutes."
"You can see the carnage on YouTube."
"First we found shelter underneath a large open tent, but it started to collapse under the weight of the hail stones."
"We started running and 1 second after we escaped the whole thing collapsed."
"I remember looking back and seeing the collapsed beam right where we just escaped the tent."
"Another young couple got killed by the impact of that same metal beam."
"They must have been right behind us."- Charlie2912
"My friends and I were on an aluminum paddle boat in the middle of a lake, a random and fast thunderstorm came on and suddenly our friends hair was standing up straight from static electricity."
"Huge lightning storm and we're essentially in a tin can in the middle of the lake."
"We all bailed and started to swim back as it started pouring, and someone in a boat saw us rushing and came out to scoop us to safety."
"Scary sh*t."- skepticallincoln
"When I was about 16weeks old I stopped breathing in the middle of the night."
"My older brother died of SIDS as a baby so when my mum had me she had some high tech baby monitoring devices in my crib."
"The only reason I'm alive is because one of these alerted my parents that I wasn't breathing, so they could react quick enough to save me."
"I have a heart murmur, that's why I stopped breathing as a baby."
"I'm okay now, just get it checked every few years that's all."- Vegemite_is_Awesome
"Fell through an open trap door like a Looney Tunes character and landed about 15 ft onto the concrete below."
"I laughed it off, walked away, and drove myself to urgent care with a broken neck."
"Also, went into hypovolemic shock when I lost about 2 liters of blood during a postpartum hemorrhage."
"I didn't realize how serious it was until way after."
"I was just chilling on the operating table, suddenly feeling very serene and out of it, thinking about how grateful my grandparents and ancestors would be for the staff who delivered my baby via c section after a difficult labor."
"My heart went into ventricular fibrillation and the heart is unable to pump oxygen to the body."
"I was induced two weeks early because my baby was in distress."
"My epidural was leaking, having bad migraines, they had to drain blood out of my feet."
"I was in active labor for so long that I was deemed failure to progress."
"Then my baby girl was born with a blood infection."
"We had to remain in the hospital due to my leaky epidural."
"The doctors tried to patch it up, didn't work."
"Then after being in the hospital for over 5 days, I was getting ready to be released."
"As I was signing my discharge paper work the nurse noticed my face looked like I was in pain."
"She asked if I was ok, I said no, I felt like I was getting a headache."
"She said she wanted to take my vitals before I left and found out my BP was 200/140."
"I was diagnosed with postpartum preeclampsia."
"They put my IV back in to give BP meds and started magnesium to prevent seizures."
"This past summer I was eating laying down and ended up choking."
"The water would hit the blockage and come right back out of my mouth, it was terrifying to see that in the mirror."
"Turns out that little bits of water did make it past the blockage enough for it to go down."
"When I was given the test results by the doctor, he was surprised I was alive."- No_Tailor_787
"I ended up scrambling up the vertical face for the last metres as after I took a wrong turn there was nowhere else to go but up."
"To go down would be definite death."
"When I made it over the top of the vertical face and onto the top of the mountain, not without slipping and almost loosing my footing twice, I fell onto my stomach and cried so much i threw up, and then realized I was being bitten by a swarm of flying ants whose home I had just thrown up on."
"About 5 metres ahead of me was the trail leading back down the mountain, the one I should have taken up but didn't find."
"I was going to get my nails done at a mall some distance from my house (it was a Wednesday), and my wedding was Saturday."
"This was June 2018."
"It is beautiful outside, nice and warm and in the evening."
"I sit at the nail shop for like an hour and hear rain beating down."
"It was really loud, and me and the tech were talking about it."
"I go outside and the water in the lot is up to my ankles."
"It was raining so hard I could barely see, and I was an hour from home."
"I wasn't near a water source like a river or lake or anything."
"The whole way the fire departments were racing in front of me with those sawhorses that say road closed."
"At one point I get stuck in traffic (it's night time) and there is a river flowing right next to me that never existed before."
"I would literally floor it and hydroplane from one dry spot to the next to try to stay above it."
"The water was pushing my car around."
"I kept looking at the houses next to me (they were on a hillside) thinking I can jump out and run."
"Finally dawned on me how people die in these things."
"I always commented about dumb people in floods, but it came out of nowhere and so fast."
"I couldn't believe it."
"There weren't even any water sources near me to flood."
"Every road I tried to take to get off this one was 20 feet under water."
"When I got home I found out a lady less than a mile from me was swept away."
"The fast food place only 1/4 mile away got flooded so fast the patrons and staff were jumping on the tables watching their cars get swept away."
"I also had a twisted ovary I refused to go to the doctor for like an idiot."
"I had a pain below my belly button that got worse in like 2 days so I got a heating pad."
"Finally my parents yelled at me that I am changing colors and this isn't normal."
"I went to the hospital where the doctor (Dr. Idiot as I call him) and Nurse Ratchet decided I had a kidney stone and made fun of me."
"She said I better never have kids if I can't tolerate this."
"I wasn't even screaming or crying just groaning and moving around."
"They held me captive for 4 hours, finally ordered a test and I got a ovarian cyst."
"Dr. Idiot told me to go to my gyno and have them 'pop it' then he refused to release me until 8 am."
"My mom said your not giving her medicine anyway just racking up a hospital bill."
"He pulled his BS and I pulled my 'I was an EMT and work for a lawyer and you can't make me stay because I don't have a head injury and I am not under the influence so I can make my own decision' comment."
"I go to the gyno the next day, she checks me and looks at me and asks if I drove myself in. I said no, my parents are out front.'
'She said I want you to go straight to your parents, have them take you to the local hospital in the emergency room entrance where the ambulances are."
"She asked if I knew where that was and I said yes, I used it before I was an EMT."
"She said to hit the call button, and they will know exactly who I am."
"If she calls an ambulance for me, it will take too long."
"I had emergency surgery within 30 minutes of arrival."
"My cyst twisted my ovary and fallopian tube and they could not be saved."
"Dr. Idiot sent a bill to which my primary doctor told the hospital I lost 2 organs because of his failure to act and he was actually fired."
"I had just gotten my epidural, and I was sitting up with my husband supporting me."
"I looked at him and said I didn't feel well and was going to pass out."
"And then I did."
"He said I took 2 big gasping breaths and then my face turned grey and I stopped moving."
"I was wearing a heart monitor because I have a heart condition, and I had no pulse for 26 seconds."
"I came to and immediately told my husband it felt different than other times I've passed out."
"This whole thing led to my unborn son having an 8 minute episode of a low heart rate, which led to an emergency c section."
"Then w days later his oxygen dropped to the 50s in the NICU and he turned blue."
"Which led to my baby being airlifted by helicopter to a nicu 2 hours away when he was 2 days old."
"He spent a week in the NICU and we drove down and visited him twice a day."
"My parents decided to give me a pringle chip in the car when i was 1."
"They had to hold me upside down so it would fall out."
"My soul would have been so upset if i died from a pringle...thank god I'm still here."- IGoByBay
"February 2018 the fourth, I believe was a Tuesday if I recall correctly."
"Woke up headed to the gym at 4 AM like normal except the previous two months I've been feeling like I've had the flu."
"vomited four toilet bowls, full of yellow bile and thought to myself this isn't the flu."
"Went to the hospital discovered my liver and kidneys had begun shutting down."
"I had begun the process of dying from plasma cell leukemia."
"December 2024 is joyfully my 79th month battling said disease."
Difficult as it may sometimes be, it's important to find a way to be grateful for the life you have.
Or rather, every now and then we should stop taking for granted how lucky we are to be alive.