Life Is Fatal

None of us are getting out of here alive.
– Nanea Hoffman

Do you know why we call someone a Methusela? He’s a character from the Bible. He was Noah’s grandfather. Yes, Noah, of the Ark fame. Methusela was said to have lived 969 years. Some people think that Methusela’s failure to reach the millenia mark had a religious context.

In Genesis, Adam and Eve were told that in the day they partook of the fruit they would surely die. Later there’s a reference that a day to the Lord is 1000 years to us. So, if the people would die within a day and a day was 1000 years, then everyone had to die within 1000 years.

By the way, that previous paragraph is a terrible mishmash of various religious theories and beliefs.

The point is that Methusela, if he lived was a very old man. Oh, one more thought old people in the bible. If you read through Genesis, people born before the flood lived for centuries. People born after the flood lived much shorter lives.

The oldest person in modern times was a woman named Jeanne Calment. She was from France. She was born in 1875 and died 122 years and 164 days later. As humans, our average lifespan is 79 years. Scientists recently concluded that on average people can only live for about 115 years.

Science is making advances. And who knows but that my grandkids will easily eclipse the century mark or more?

But, unless we finally manage to upload our consciousness into a computer, we are all going to die.

It’s not a pleasant thought. Even for a person of faith, the thought of leaving everyone and everything can be frightening.

And yet, we can find inspiration in Hoffman’s quote. I worked with whitewater rafting companies for many years. Rafting can be a dangerous sport. People die every year. I owned a t-shirt on etime that said,

You could fall out of the boat and die
You could get trapped under a log and die
You could get smashed on the rocks and die
Or you could stay home, fall off the coach and die

Rafting guides suggest that if you don’t have a chance of dying it’s not a true sport. They pretty much don’t count anything as a sport other than rafting, skiing, hang gliding, skydiving, racing. I’m not sure, but I think bear wrestingly qualifies.

Not everyone needs to risk death to enjoy life. But, we can also not allow fear of death to prevent us from living life.

William Wallace, the great Scottish freedom fighter is credited with saying,

Every man dies but not every man really lives.

And Shakespeare gave us the immortal lines,

A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.

So, enjoy life. Take risks once in a while. Don’t let fear of death keep you from life.

Oh, and Stay safe

Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.

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