Most people live days of predictable basic routines, perhaps out of habit, perhaps because of their job, school, or family obligations, but however it is structured; for the most part there is a consistent rhythm to most people's way of managing their life, for better or for worst. The thing is on any given day, something can happen in a blink of an eye that will change all of that, such as a car accident, a shooting, a bad mugging, a catastrophic weather event, or similar. While it is true, that these above things are in aggregate at a low percentage chance of happening, the fact of the matter is that these events do happen each and every day to someone, unexpectedly.
Tragic events can either happen to us or they can happen to someone very close to us, in either event, that event will have material effects on your life. For instance, when you wake up after a good night's rest, only to discover that there are a bunch of messages on your phone, to which, in the checking of them, you learn that your mother or your father, or someone very close to you, has died unexpectedly during the night, the impact of the immensity of this news, of this incredible lost, will absolutely stagger you. The thoughts and emotions that will run through your mind will be almost overwhelming to you.
Consider too, a situation in which through, for instance, a significant car accident, that you are badly injured in such a manner that whatever routine you once had, is changed, in the flash of the moment, so that now you are no longer able to walk or eat without aid, whether forever, or for a period of time. This means, that the freedom of movement and actions that you once took for granted, no longer exists for you, as you are dependent upon others to help and to aid you in your day-to-day activities.
No matter what the event was, whether it happened directly to you, or to someone else, the tragic nature of it, especially in the sense, that there is no going back to putting things back to how they once were, is unsettling to say the least. In these types of situations, you will not ever say to yourself, that you wish you had been meaner in your dealings with individuals, that you wished you had been greedier, more selfish, more condescending or rude, more angry or more drunk, or that you wished you had spent more time wreaking havoc instead of bringing more peace and serenity to yourself and those that you loved.
In any given day, there are choices upon choices for us, even on the most routine of days, and those choices that we make, good or bad, coherent or not, are the choices that build the blocks of who and what we are. There is a mirror, and when you face that mirror, there will be only one person facing you back, and the answer that you want to give to the question of the meaning of it all is that when presented the choice of doing right or doing wrong, that far more often than not, you did the right thing; and if you have done so, when those tragic or unexpected events hit you, which they will, the essence of what you really are will absorb them so much better.