In Numbers, or Not

(This blog was originally posted 12/28/2008.  I liked it enough to rehash it here. m)

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.”- Helen Keller

In these times, when three or four of my friends have been laid off, and when it isn't inconceivable for me to be worried about my position, I do have to wonder about this illusion of safety we all live under...

Sure, there's the old adage that most of us are one paycheck away from being homeless....
But even worse, we are all really on the precipice of life and death every single day.  We climb into giant hurdling machines and up the ante by eating or talking on the phone, or turning radio stations.  We eat food that we would not be able to identify if it were broken down to it's alien simple particles.  We do things every day that are likely to make us targets of random violence or victims of hapless accidents. 

I answered a meme-ish survey about the last time I was close to dying.  I answered truthfully, "right now... and right now... and right now."

That tingle in my spine could be a brain tumor, the pain in my thigh could be blood clot making its way towards my heart.  I could be dead by morning and not ever have known what hit me.  Unlikely sure, but unlikelier things happen all the time.  My best friend in high school had the same first and middle name as me.  I'd say the odds of me dying on any given day of any given thing are at least as good as that.

So before you check out and say to yourself, "Oh she's going to get all morbid again," I do have a real point.  And that is that maybe most of us should stop living with the illusion that we are safe.  Maybe we need to stop avoiding risk in the hopes that we will live far into our golden years.. when if you think about it, the years you have now have the potential to be so much greater than your "golden" years... if you just let them.

Pet that snake
Jump off that cliff
Date that guy
Make that trip

And yes, face that goddamned whale.

Carpe that fucking diem my friends, because when we go, we might as well leave a bunch of puzzled on-lookers staring at our corpse and saying, "what the hell was THAT?!"