Life and Death

Some people believe in Life after Death. They imagine variations of what it's like. But no one actually knows what happens or even if consciousness continues after death. 

Death doesn't bother me. I don't feel sad for people who die. After all, they've only gone to a place that I'll be going to as well. I'll be going to that same place, unless you believe in heaven and hell, and then all bets are off. But there are excellent reasons to think heaven and hell are fairy tales. The existence of consciousness after death, that's something else, and there are excellent reasons to think that that is real.

I've had a "different" life, I think, from most Americans. Some of the differences I've experienced stem from the panic disorder that ruled my life from about 1967 until I found a medicine that really helped me. (I wrote about that part of my life in a post titled Panic.) That period lasted about 40 years. Although I blogged about it, there's nothing I can say or write that would give you a real idea of what panic disorder is like ... how much it disrupts and tortures one's existence.

We all have paths, and I believe we all have many paths and many lifetimes. We return to this existence to learn things that only living a human life can teach us. Our bodies wear out because each stage of life has it's lessons. Young people can't learn the lessons that the elderly learn. Young and old are like two different creations. 

If I die tonight, I'll miss doing some things that I'd like to do. But I don't think I'll miss life on earth. I think I'll experience that again and again and again. In other words, I'll do it over and over until I get it right. And then I won't need to incarnate in a human life. But I'll probably incarnate as something in some existence that I can't imagine. I think we all will do that. Call it Heaven if you want, but you'll stay, rest up, reflect, and then ... you'll do it all over again. 

Believe me or don't believe me, it doesn't matter at all. Reality is what it is, and wishing won't change it.

Beast Mode Sleep

I slept poorly last night. It happens often, but some nights are worse than others. Nuria told me that last night I kept raising my left arm and leg. And I kept turning over and over repeatedly. At one point she asked me what was wrong and I replied, "I was dreaming." I remember telling her that.

In the past I've thrown my arms up so forcefully that my hands struck the wall forcefully. I've lashed out with my leg and kicked the iron radiator beside my bed with my bare foot. Believe me, that hurt! I've literally thrown myself out of bed and onto the hardwood floor. One night when I slept alone, I awoke to find my bedroom trashed. The lamp beside my bed was on the floor, my pillow was on the floor, the trash can was turned over, my blanket was on the floor on top of the trash can, etc. To say my sleep is restless would be an understatement. Last night my restlessness was bad enough that Nuria got out of bed at 2AM and lay down on the living room sofa in an attempt to get some sleep.

I think I've always slept this way. It's not restless sleep, it's violent sleep. My brain must be in turmoil about something. Nothing comes to my mind during the day when I'm awake. But when I go to sleep, my unconscious brain goes into overdrive.

My mother and father slept in separate beds and I think I know why. I hope it doesn't come to that but I am, after all, my father's son.

Storm Outage

I'm back online. My little city had a hell of a storm. The weatherman said that the winds were 80 mph (128 km/h) and 70,000 people lost electricity. I was one of those 70,000 without electric power. No TV, no computer, no radio, no room lights, and after 12 hours, no hot water. The refrigerator wouldn't run. The electric stove/oven and the microwave oven wouldn't run. 

When night came Nuria and I used candles, and I had a battery-powered fluorescent-tube lamp. When we went to bed I turned off the fluorescent lamp and let the candles light the bedroom. It was a very soft light, and eventually it burned so low that I snuffed out the candles.

(Photo left) A fallen tree blocks a road around the corner from my house. You can see the electric wires tangled in it. That's the mess that cut off electricity to my house and to a number of other houses. I lost power at about 4 PM on the 22nd and power was restored at about 5 PM on the 23rd. That was a very long 25 hours! Sandwiches and trips to a nearby fast-food restaurant kept the situation tolerable.

This photo (right) shows the top third of an electric utility pole. In the US, treated wooden poles are commonly used for both telephone and electric power. When the tree fell on the wires, the top of the pole snapped off and landed in the street. It's not an uncommon sight after a strong storm, especially a hurricane. 

I would imagine sights like these were scattered around the city. I'm glad the outage lasted only a day. I've had outages after a hurricane that lasted three days. And I'm glad this event happened in June. When it happens in mid-winter it's called an ice storm. There's not much worse than waking up in a cold house with no electricity/no heat with the outside temperature at 18°F. It's happened to me. I've blogged about it.

Smart People Dumb People

There are two basic kinds of people. There are smart people and there are stupid people. Now this is painting a picture with a broad brush, because obviously people can be divided into many groups. But broadly speaking, we all know there are smart people and there are dumb people. Both groups think they are smart. The difference is that smart people make allowance for being wrong; they know that it's possible, so they listen carefully to arguments from both sides. Whereas, dumb people insist they are always right. They aren't smart enough to recognize when they might be wrong.

In fact, there is a name for this phenomenon. It's called the Dunning–Kruger effect and I've blogged about it previously here. There is a reason that I am bringing up this subject again.

I'm not a very political person but I will say this about the current political climate: it has really put the Dunning-Kruger effect on display. There are many people willing to die for their "cause" when it is obvious from listening to them that they, to put it politely, are basing their decisions on incomplete or faulty information. They don't have all the facts and they don't want to have all the facts. It's like the old saying that goes, "My mind is made up; don't confuse me with the facts." These kind of people have always been around. I'm just surprised to learn that there are so many of them today.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
—Albert Einstein

"He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him."
—Milan Kundera

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."
—George Carlin

"Never get into an argument about a subject you know little about."
—VirtualWayne

Highway Lesson

There are YouTube videos where you can watch drivers flee from the police. Sometimes they get away. Usually, they're caught. But what is it about the human brain that makes a driver continue fleeing when his car has four flat tires and he can't drive faster than 20 mph, there are a half dozen police cars fifty feet behind him, and a police helicopter is circling above him? Does he (it's always a he) still think there is a chance he might escape?

How does this end? Usually like this: a police car gets in front of the escaping driver and stops. The perpetrator then goes around the police car. So the police car goes around the perp again and stops again. Then the perp does a U-turn and drives through the group of police cars behind him and continues down the road but going the wrong way now. All of this takes place in slow motion because, remember, the perp's car has four flat tires.

It eventually ends when the perp gets caught (or killed) by a gaggle of police officers. I'm not making any kind of philosophical statement here. But if there is any lesson to be had, it is this: sometimes it's in your best interest to know when to quit.

Death

It's Monday evening. Today, I went to the lab and gave samples of bodily fluids so that the technicians could analyze them and tell my doctor just how far from normal my body is, which is what they routinely do. My body has been out of whack my entire life. My first blood test was at age 18, or maybe 21, and I remember my triglycerides being about 300. Or maybe they were 400. Either number is very high. But they've been higher. I have a lab test where my triglycerides were 462. And I have a test where they were 639. A normal test is less than 150. 

My heart has a-fib (atrial fibrillation). It's an abnormal rhythm that can cause a blood clot in the heart that then travels to the brain and causes a stroke. I take two prescription meds for the a-fib. And yet, I still have a-fib. So why am I taking the two meds? 

My cardio doctor wants me to add another med to the mix. He wants me to take Xarelto, also known as revaroxaban. $800 cash, $500 with insurance. That's for three months. So...$2000 per year, until I die. Of course, the price goes up every year. The problem is, I have other, more fun things I'd like to spend that extra $2000 on doing. So, as is often the case, I'm ignoring my doctor's advice. It's a gamble, of course. But every day I get out of bed is a gamble. I could spend that money on having fun. I could spend it on doing good things. Or I could spend it on extending the number of days that I'm not having fun. And even those extended days aren't guaranteed.

My father had a stroke. It interfered with his hand-eyes coordination. The doctor put him on warfarin, a drug so dangerous that users have to get a blood test every week or two to adjust the amount they're taking. Then he had another stroke, even though he was taking the warfarin daily and getting his blood tested routinely. Then he had a third stroke. He survived all his strokes only to die from lymphoma (specifically: septic shock caused by the treatment for lymphoma). 

I think my mother probably died from a stroke. She was found alive but unconscious and never woke up. She had been in good physical health.

We will all die from something, sometimes when we're least expecting it, and sometimes when we've been waiting for it for months. I read a book in which the author made the claim that death is our final rescuer. When we're trapped in a body that is suffering, that is in great pain, and the doctors can do nothing, death will come to us and end our suffering. When no one can help us, death will help us.

But I know that death is nothing to fear. It's like that old saying, "Death is the best part of living—that's why they save it for last."

Guns Again

It seems there's a school or mall shooting almost every day in the U.S. The problem is bad guys with guns. A lot of Americans, including the NRA and Congress and most Republicans, like to say that "the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Thus, it follows that guns need to be legal and easily accessible to keep us all safe. 

But statistics tell a different story. ALERRT (Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training) at Texas State University has compiled data on gun mass attacks in the United States since 2000. According to ALERRT:

Mass Attack Outcomes:

• 1% - shooter fled, still at large
  
• 10% - shot by citizens 
• 11% - surrendered
• 34% - subdued by police
• 34% - suicide after police arrive
• 38% - shooter fled
  
• 40% - subdued by citizens
• 70% - suicide before police arrive
• 78% - shot by police

One in ten mass shootings are ended by a good guy with a gun. But one hundred percent of mass shootings are caused by easy access to firearms, including weapons of war.

I'm not anti-gun. I own a gun and I keep it loaded. The reason I have a gun is to defend my home from intruders. But I can own a gun and still think that guns are out of control in the U.S. They are out of control. At this point in America's history, those who oppose gun law reform are, by default, supporting the continued slaughter of American civilians. There is NO MIDDLE GROUND.

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”
Dante Alighieri

The power of choosing good and evil is within the reach of all.
Origen

So choose, and choose now. Are you for the continued, unnecessary deaths of innocent people, or are you opposed to it? And if you're opposed to it, do you think that having easy access to guns will suddenly prevent the deaths of innocent people?

Lost Week

This past week was uneventful here. Nothing happened. Except, my partner Nuria had a birthday. And when we went out to eat a birthday dinner, we encountered the first obstacle. The restaurant where we wanted to dine was closed. Covid has killed a lot of businesses.

So we drove to another restaurant. We ate and as we were leaving, I realized the Jeep had a flat tire. This wasn't my first rodeo. I've had flat tires before. 

When you're driving slowly, the flat tire sounds like whup-whup-whup-whup as the bad tire rolls along the paved road. I normally stop and change to the spare. But this time there was no good place to pull off the road, and if I drove fast enough the whup-whup sound disappeared. Maybe the rotation of the tire produced enough centrifugal force on the sidewalls to lift the wheel's rim off the road. Maybe having four wheel drive helped.

Whatever, I was able to drive the Jeep to a friend's house about 8 miles away. Then we got into his car and drove to an auto parts store where I bought a can of Fix-a-Flat. It plugged the hole in the tire and partially inflated it, lifting the rim maybe an inch or two off the ground. Then I drove the semi-fixed Jeep to a nearby auto repair shop (which was closed) where I parked it and left. I called the owner and told him about the Jeep. He advised me that after using Fix-a-Flat the tire would have to be replaced.

The next morning I walked to the auto shop, getting there just before they opened. I told the owner what I wanted him to do (remove the tire from the rim, clean out the Fix-a-Flat, repair the hole, mount the tire on the rim, and put the wheel back on the Jeep). I told him not to replace the tire unless I give him permission. He said okay. I walked home. A while later he called me and said the job was finished—the tire was fixed. I walked to the shop, paid him, and drove home. 

The hole wasn't on the tread part of the tire, the part that contacts the road. It was on the inner sidewall. How the hole was made on that part of the tire is a mystery. But strange things happen. Once, a long time ago, I had driven to Richmond to do some business, and when I got back to my car I saw that one of the wheels was low on air. As it wasn't yet flat, I drove the car home, which took 30 to 45 minutes on an Interstate highway. When I got home I had the tire repaired. The cause of the puncture was a spoon. That's right, they found a spoon inside my tire. 

One time my Jeep developed a flat tire while parked inside my garage. I backed the Jeep halfway out of the garage but then the tire came off the rim and I had to stop. I was able to get the wheel off the car by using two jacks. One was a bottle jack that came with the Jeep and the other was a hydraulic floor jack that I kept in my garage.

Another time I had a flat tire (not on the Jeep) and I had to change it beside the road. I removed four of the five lug nuts but the last nut was "frozen" in place. I walked to a gas station and borrowed a hammer and a cold chisel (a chisel made for cutting cold metal) and I walked back to my car and, using the hammer and chisel, I cut the lug nut off the wheel stud.

I've had other flat tires. None of them were fun. But s**t happens and it can be worse than a flat tire.