Thoughts on life and death

This post is a work in progress. 
It will be updated and expanded as thoughts evolve.

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As I get older, I think about life differently. 

One position that I cannot escape is that I want to live; I like living; I do not want to die. Life is a wonderful thing, a wondrous thing, which is difficult to understand, but is not difficult to appreciate. I understand that in difficult times some may want to end their pain. But the overriding reality is: Once you are dead, you are dead, and that means that this life is over. Perhaps what comes next, if indeed something else follows this life, as most religions posit, that may be as good or better. However, whatever one believes follows Earthly life, we won't know until that time comes what, if anything, follows this life.

Which is not to say that at some future point my life's quality will have deteriorated to a point where I will no longer favor living. This is what happened to my paternal grandmother, who in her later years often said "I have lived too long."

Her long life was free from medical problems, except for four pregnancies, which I believe were perhaps consummated at home, or at least in far more primitive conditions than today, given that her last children, twins, were born in the early 1920s. I don't guarantee these dates are correct, but late in life she had surgery, perhaps in her 80s. And also late in life, she fell and broke her shoulder. Until those advanced ages, Marcie had few health problems that I knew of.

Her husband, Jim, died at 62, and two of her sons -- Ned, the oldest, and my father Jim, Jr., the second oldest, died at 66. Her other three sons are still living.

While she suffered some memory and identity problems, Marcie was pretty healthy all her life. All 106 years. I hope and pray I have her long-life genes.

Of the many things she shared with me and others, one thing I remember very clearly: "I hate doctors." And she would tell the doctors the same thing. Could the infrequent doctor visits that her dislike for them produced be the secret of her longevity?

I know on a personal basis several physicians in a variety of specialties. I respect them immensely for their dedication and their knowledge, and I believe that good doctors do indeed help people. However, I must at the same time admit that I avoid going to the doctor unless I have an obvious problem.

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There are two major questions about life that perplex thinking people. Religious people follow #1, while non-religious people follow #2, or perhaps consider both and try to work through this conundrum:

1. If there is no God, or Supreme Being, where did all the "stuff" on Earth and in the universe come from?

This question has no answer that is scientifically satisfying, that I have heard.

2. If there is a God or Supreme Being, where did God or the Supreme Being come from?

Trying to solve those mysteries may keep me busy in the later years.

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I also marvel at the wonder of human life. Each of us is something special, if only because we are alive. Humans are a wondrous creation of a supreme being or an evolutionary product of this unknowable world. How did this occur? How can we be?

That is much easier to understand if there is a god/supreme being than if somehow all that is now, all that came before, and all that will be just somehow magically happened.

And the idea that the wonders of human life and the things that each of us do and think will end at some point, a point unknown for the most part, and the possibility that that is all there is seems somehow anticlimactic. 

These are things that many never actually think about. We go through life dealing with life, problems, happy times, jobs, family and the rest, and never really give much thought to how special it is just to be a human being and all that involves.

But once one has considered life and has come to appreciate how magnificent it is that humans -- and each of us as an individual -- exist, our demise seems horribly unfair.

Our small world

The immensity of the universe -- the known universe -- is stunning, and its complexity and beauty awe-inspiring.

Spending an hour or two or three or more watching Carl Sagan's "Cosmos," or the new generation featuring Neal DeGrasse Tyson, or some other science-based look at the universe, will change your perspective on life, at least for a little while.

When we are finely focused on the things in our lives that have our attention, we forget -- if we ever really knew -- just how tiny and insignificant we, and those things we are involved in are in the grand scheme of things.

And now, in the unknowable immensity of the universe scientists have found a star, Trappist-1, with several Earth-like planets orbiting it in our stellar neighborhood, about 39 light years away. These are the first such planets yet discovered outside our solar system.

The curse of being a "jack of all trades; master of none"

Some people are a doctor, lawyer, mechanic, engineer, accountant, teacher, musician, artist, welder, or whatever for 20, 30 or more years; it's what they do.

I once worked with a guy named Ray Brooks who had many talents. He was a decent graphic artist and photographer. He also played drums well. And basketball and baseball. He was the production manager of WHIS-TV, and could run cameras, work the film chain, edit film, operate the video switcher ... the list goes on. I always admired that about Ray.

It took some years before it occurred to me that I was a lot like Ray. By that I mean I did lots of things decently, but had no particular interest that dominated all others. I was a decent trumpet player, percussionist and played a little bass. I earned a BA in Music education and a M.Ed. and taught band in public schools. I was fast on my feet and could catch a football and played decent shortstop. I also was a tolerable writer and worked in radio and TV in various rolls in production and on the air, culminating as the 11 o'clock anchor on WHIS-TV.

I claim only a similar orientation to doing lots of things, rather than one like folks involved in the careers listed in the first paragraph, like Ray did. I don't claim to be as broadly good at so many as he was.

As a result, I have had a varied, but interesting life. My chief interest shifts among a list of things, and I have had a bunch of different jobs in a few career areas. I know "something" about a bunch of things, but never became a true expert in any of them.