I used to make a baseball analogy that applied to my grandfather, my father and then me. I used to be in the dugout. My dad was on-deck. My grandfather was at bat. Eventually, and now, my dad is at bat and I'm on-deck. This was one of many rationalizations I've applied to cloud the fact that one day, I will die. Here's another one I still use: If I'm lucky enough to live until 82, then I have as much time left as I've already lived and that's a long time. That works irrationally, but rationally it fails on two points. First, I have no idea when I'm gonna die. Second, from a perception point, time does indeed move forward at a greater rate as we age. Why? Because when you were 5 a year was 20% or one-fifth of your entire life span. When you're 40 a year is a mere one-fortieth of your life.
I said in my last update that I had chosen a path of reflection and planning at this juncture in my life. Some of that reflection also carries a theme of skirting death many, many times as a youth and several times as an adult. When I was a child I did childish things; these things included hard drug and alcohol abuse and very reckless driving. Lots of all three at the same time, in VERY short periods of time and at great speeds. I don't why God let me live perhaps 20 or 30 times, but I am damn sure glad he did. As an adult with hypersensitivity to my surroundings I have dodged certain-death car wrecks that someone with normal levels of situational awareness would have never seen. The irony is, from an awareness of point of view today, I am an excellent driver. I tend to focus on wheels not body panels and a green light doesn't mean go, it means look for me as a 17 year old and then proceed if he is not proximal.
Obviously my last brush with death was my cycling accident in March of '09 in which my helmet was broken into a half-a-dozen pieces quite literally. That one wasn't so bad from a taste of mortality view. Had I bought the farm, I would have died doing something I loved and I would have at a minimum left my wife and children very well off financially. I am by no means saying it would have been a positive thing. My wife's loss of her first husband is perhaps the greatest example for me that life is far from perfect. In a perfect world Joe Decker would be alive today and Karen would have had a twin sister.
I don't know what's going to happen when I die but I do know the three distinct possibilities: a) lights out and I'm the same place I was before May 19, 1968. b) I go to Heaven. c) I go to Hell. Ever heard of Pascale's Wager? In simple terms Pascale's Wager acknowledges that God (and therefore Heaven) either does or does not exist and thus the best strategy for eliminating the outcome of going to hell is to believe in God/Heaven. That way, even if you're wrong, the worst case scenario is "lights out". I don't know if hedging your bets as the basis of your faith is acceptable on God's terms, but again the worst case scenario is a more peaceful human race.
The funny thing about the exploration of my own mortality is that it always seems to yield the same self-help notion of doing the best I can with what I have. I do live my life in service to my family. I am the best husband and father I can be and that means considering me fourth. I do my best at my job and the thing that I do best is acting as an agent of change. It means going out on a limb without regard to anyone else going with me; fortune favors the daring. Admittedly I was not the best son in my formative years, but I would hope that one day my birth family will see me for who I am today and understand that now is all the time we have. That the enjoyment of these remaining moments subsumes the notion of obligation.
