@sing said:
We all are going to get our ticket punched, one way or another.
Yet but I bet you look both ways when crossing a street.
Yeah, I do. And, still a couple of years ago, a car zoomed across three lanes to drive into a a mall just as was I riding my bike across the parking lot entrance. I was looking at the car coming straight at me in this weird disbelief. I swerved away from the the car, got hit in the back tire rather than broadside. I was catapulted about 25 feet in the air. I tucked and rolled and came back up standing. I turned around to see my bike squished under the car. I should have been injured or dead. Just wasn’t my time to get the ticket punched. Pure luck, grace, whatever but very little that I controlled in that situation.
Yesterday, a friend of the wife was found dead in a hotel. Ticket punched.
Every spring and fall, we have PNetter posts of some sort of “tragic” kayak death. I suspect we will have kayaking deaths as long as we have kayaking.
So true, but we want to believe we are in control. If it gets us happily through the day then perhaps it is a worthwhile illusion. Our brains tend to prefer information that is easily processed, or that is often repeated. It’s called Processing Fluency. The greater the fluency the more we gravitate to believing the truth of it. Like if I look both ways I will never be run over by a car, but this isn’t true is it. That we are in control fits into this dynamic. C’est la vie!
@sing said:
Pure luck, grace, whatever but very little that I controlled in that situation.
It is amazing the number of near misses that we have over the course of our lives. If we really thought about it, we would probably never leave our house - Processing Fluency in action.
I was about to post that the most dangerous thing that we do every day is get in a car and drive, but when I googled the stats (2016), it appears that deaths in car accidents are down significantly - still a dangerous thing to do, but in many states drug overdoses have overtaken car accidents as the leading cause of accidental death. I’m guessing for most people, driving is still the most dangerous thing we do every day.
If you look at young adults, accidents are the leading cause of death, but few of us here are young adults. So the secret to a long life - don’t smoke, eat right, exercise and lose weight. Why are those things so hard to do.
Keep riding your bike Sing. I’m going to keep paddling…
I am not saying we shouldn’t look both ways as we travel through life. What I am saying is we develop basic assumptions on which we believe to be true that are actually false. We do this because of how we process experience.
@castoff said:
Where does “ Here hold my Beer. Watch This!” Fit in the list?
I was reading Charlie Walbridge’s Whitewater accidents report in the AW journal last night.
“Oliver Woodward, 21, drowned on July 4th after he and a freind were thrown from a rented raft in Alpine Canyon (Wyoming - Snake River). Neither were wearing life vests. Mr. Woodward was last seen floating downstream holding his beer high so as to not get water in it.” … His body was recovered 8 dalys later.
His friend was arrested somewhat later for being drunk & disorderly at a DQ.
I felt the same way not wanting to see the humor in the tragedy, but I have to wonder if someone had held the beer would he have survived to finish it.
Well, hopefully someone slung Oliver some send-off humour per the chiseled stone:
He held his ale up high ‘bove waves.
Ain’t suds but souls Jesus saves.
Olly last seen floatin’ towards his watery grave,
Devil in this detail - Last drop’s the Snake’s deprave.
The secret to living a good long life and avoiding heart disease and cancer is to choose your parents very wisely. Your DNA has much more to do with your health and what diseases you may die of than most of us would like to think about.
I think a lot of us like semi-risky water activities because it makes us feel alive and in control of our destiny to some extent. But none of us are really in control, some random visit to the doctor as you get older and you may discover that you thought you were in control but your genes are about to take you on a long bad ride to get your ticket punched.
