Lucky to be alive.
How many times have you heard people say this when they have a near miss incident? It was a news story about a car crash that recently made my mind start churning. The broadcaster said 'we'll be talking with the man who survived a horrible car crash on the weekend, and says he's lucky to be alive.' It struck me funny. Considering all of the laws, all of the safety features, airbags, crumple zones, seat belts.... can you call it 'luck'? Or is it human ingenuity? Is a near miss incident the biggest stroke of luck you've had?
Or is the fact that YOUR dna, of all the possible combinations that your parents could have come up with, is the set that ended up embedding in your mother's uterus? And managed to hold on? And develop normally? And survive, given the frail nature of our bodies?
Or is it the fact that humanity has even come to exist at all in the first place? That Earth is hospitable, that these absurd bags of flesh managed to evolve into a sentient, walking, talking, being?
Given the sheer impossibility of our existence, a near miss accident is far from the only thing that should drive home to you how lucky you are to be alive. It's too bad we don't have that appreciation on a daily basis.
How many times have you heard people say this when they have a near miss incident? It was a news story about a car crash that recently made my mind start churning. The broadcaster said 'we'll be talking with the man who survived a horrible car crash on the weekend, and says he's lucky to be alive.' It struck me funny. Considering all of the laws, all of the safety features, airbags, crumple zones, seat belts.... can you call it 'luck'? Or is it human ingenuity? Is a near miss incident the biggest stroke of luck you've had?
Or is the fact that YOUR dna, of all the possible combinations that your parents could have come up with, is the set that ended up embedding in your mother's uterus? And managed to hold on? And develop normally? And survive, given the frail nature of our bodies?
Or is it the fact that humanity has even come to exist at all in the first place? That Earth is hospitable, that these absurd bags of flesh managed to evolve into a sentient, walking, talking, being?
Given the sheer impossibility of our existence, a near miss accident is far from the only thing that should drive home to you how lucky you are to be alive. It's too bad we don't have that appreciation on a daily basis.
