What doesn’t kill you
When we escape death, we feel lucky and purposeful. Now science is explaining why
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/15/what_doesnt_kill_you/singleton/
This is a bit of a long article for some of my readers (I confess to reading it in two sittings, but then I started to read it after an exhausting day working on our construction project), but the thoughts it triggers (for me, anyway) are very interesting. People are meaning making machines and love to build narrations around the random circumstances that happen in their lives:
We compose our life stories using the data given — the somewhat random happenings of our pasts — but then we get the roles of the data and the interpretation confused: we stare in wonder at how well the events seem to fit the theme, forgetting that we custom-fit the theme to the events. Instead of drawing a target around a cluster of bullet holes and gawking at the aim of a marksman, you’re constructing a story around a series of occurrences and marveling at the insight and wisdom of providence. One stray bullet and you wouldn’t be who you are today.
I touch upon luck and its interpretation in my article about faith. I admit to often falling into the trap of wishing I was more than a sequence of random happenstance with an occasional grin (and often loud outbursts of cursing). I want to be judged by history as consequential, not lost to everyone but my family and a handful of close friends. I suspect that is a core element of human nature and one of the reasons why we all work so hard at our personal narration. However, the scientist / critical thinker in me forces me to acknowledge (even if I only do so for a few minutes a time) that life is nothing more than ‘shit happens’ and all the rest is spin. Why should someone who was _nearly_ killed, but had his (or her, lets be gender neutral here) house, family and community destroyed (by, say, a tornado, earthquake or tsunami) be lucky? Perhaps the ‘lucky’ ones were those that were killed instantly and never had to spend a moment wallowing in depression from knowledge that everything important to them was gone. Why should the guy who _almost_ died when he was struck by lightning be the lucky one when he will be living the rest of his life with serious long-term health consequences of being partially cooked alive?
Why can’t the guy who has an uneventful life, married a sweet caring loving partner, raised loving children that go on to contribute to society, then dies peacefully in his sleep (perhaps holding hand with his partner who dies at the same moment) be the lucky one? Maybe because that narration is just boring?
