Hey, I'll bite.
You know, it's cool to have a gazillion hours of flight time. The trouble is, you can't ever mention it because people think you're just bragging. "Oh what are you, some kind of know-it-all? You have 10,000 hours? Big f'ing deal." Yup, big f'ing deal.
Having a lot of flight time does not mean I know everything, nor does it make me immune from mistakes. I have to guard against making them every bit as diligently as a guy with 1/10th of my flight time. Maybe even more diligently, because I know more now than I did back then.
I look at the accident reports every day. Not just helicopters, but fixed-wing too. I study each one, trying to put myself in that pilot's place, wondering if the same thing would have resulted with me at the controls? Often, I cannot say for sure that it would have not. Sometimes the "accident chain" begins...or the dominoes start to fall if you will prior to take off.
The other thing that comes to mind when I scan the accident reports is: How many "situations" come this close to being an accident but don't result in bent metal? Like Raven's little clutch failure. How easily that could have been an accident! The decision to turn back from 200 feet surely was gutsy. And risky. There have been many aircraft lost in such a maneuvre. How many times have we ourselves been in similar situations? When high-time pilots like myself get together, we often marvel that we've been able to survive to this level without killing ourselves. It's no joke; it didn't happen because we're such nice guys. Not that I haven't crashed...
Early on, when I was just a private pilot I was flying a Bell 47. We all knew it had a weak engine, weaker certainly than it's sister ship, but not by much. I flew out to a friend's farm (who was a student pilot), loaded him up and proceded to show him an ag-turn. Only... Only nobody had showed me. Oops!
Took off and made my "swath run." Due to the weak engine and the load of the two of us, I was only at about 45, not 60 mph at the end of the field. Little did I know that wasn't nearly enough airspeed. Hauled back on the stick. The helicopter climbed up a bit and then just stopped. I pedal-turned around. We were now pointed directly at the ground and it was very clear that we didn't have enough altitude to get some airspeed and fly away. Gulp! Pulling max power, I leveled and braced for impact. And impact we did! Spread the skids, cut the boom and rolled it over. Totalled that little G-2. And it was all me, baby!
The FAA came, and I made weasley excuses about a "power problem." Turned out that one of the six cylinders was completely dead. Off the hook! But you know, it was still my fault. I wrecked a perfectly good Bell 47 (well, almost perfect) nearly killed myself and a friend and I have to live with that for the rest of my life. Do not think that it doesn't weigh heavily, for it does. I made a dumb mistake due to overconfidence and cockiness. I've spent the rest of my career trying to atone for it.