Every so often we all philosophize about our life. I mentioned at our 15 Craigside dinner table the other day how fortunate we are to be here. Then, it occurred to me that I might have been the healthiest of the group, for every one of them have had a joint replacement or two, serious life-threatening ailments and several stays in the hospital. My hospital experiences have been colonoscopies and when I had my tonsil out seventy years ago, and I have yet to stay overnight.
Two ways of looking at this. I might have been lucky and things usually balance out at the end. Or, be thankful and keep hoping for the best.
As you know if you have been keeping up with this blog, I avoided my most recent colonoscopy and removal of a couple of skin tags, fearing the worst. When all turned out well, I entered a state of Europhia 3, which continues today.
However, just the fact that my table mates and I are still alive is something worthy of comment, for I go to a lot of movies, and people are dying all over the place. Ever see a John Wick film? Hundreds, in gruesome detail.
In the USA, people die most from heart ailments or cancer, but #3 is something called unintentional, mostly accidents. Life expectancy is today at 78.6. I am 78.9 years old, so have already exceeded the norm. On the other hand, Hawaii has the highest life expectancy in the nation, and if you were born in 2015, you should live for 81.3 years, and if in 1980, then 76.8 years. However, I was born in 1940, when the life expectancy for men was only 60.8 (65.2 if female), so I've exceeded the average by almost 20 years. Further, there are people living at 15C in the vicinity of 100 years old. The life expectancy if you were born in 1900 was 46.3 and 48.3. Thus, they should have died before 1950!
But back to me, long my greatest fear has been a car accident. One of my nightmares is that I'm driving and can't see where I'm going. I think the year was 1970 or so, when I was in a car which was heading for Los Angeles with Malibu Beach on the right when we passed through a traffic intersection. I happened to notice just after we went through that a car ran a red light and crashed on the beach. Never read about it in the newspaper, and it was probably someone who suffered a heart attack, but if we were a couple of seconds later, I would probably would not be here today.
I now have some mild claustrophobia, and flying in a jet liner should be troublesome, for this enclosed bullet is moving along at almost the speed of sound. For some reason it is not, but now I'm heading for 3 million miles on Star Alliance, and so if this continues.... Well, the death rate on commercial airlines in the U.S. is around 0.00002 per million passenger miles, so no concern for me here. In a car? 0.01 per million passenger miles. Still pretty safe, because I'm on the road less than 10,000 miles/year.
Looking back at my life, the dumbest thing I might have ever done was to walk back to the Waldorf Astoria after seeing a night show on Broadway. You would think at 10 PM in New York City there would be people no matter where you went. Not so, for I passed through two blocks of darkened streets, where dozens of dumpsters were strewn, each capable of shielding a mugger. A taxi might have cost $10. But nothing happened.
I remember being at a reception in a Bangkok hotel, and I had a choice of catching a cab for $2 to my hotel across the Chao Phraya or walking through an empty block full of dogs to get to a free river shuttle. I stupidly chose the latter, and at mid-block a dog began to bark, then all of them did...but thankfully at something else. I snuck through and lived. There are up to 300,000 abandoned dogs on the streets of Bangkok. Buddhist principles override public concern.
I can go on and on to further detail how blessed I have been. You too should count your blessings.
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It is now appearing that Tropical Storm Dorian will not attain hurricane force. If it does, it will be just off Florida for landfall on Sunday:
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