Have you ever wondered, how am still alive?

My friend’s daughter, recently died.
She was only 17 years old.
It was a terrible car crash.
Three other girls died too.
There was only her torso, and one arm left.
I was certainly more reckless than her, and I can’t begin to explain the things that I have survived.
Why not me, instead of her?

Personal experiences, welcome.

If this question is too traumatic, please don’t respond…....

I think it’s human nature to seek out meaning among truly random noise. Humans are very poor at understanding chance, and the fact that real random data has a lot more clumps in it.

I remember seeing a video (or reading about) about a professor who asks the students to pick 100 random numbers from 1–6 and write them on the chalkboard and then roll a 6-sided die 100 times and write those results on a second chalkboard. The professor would leave the room and return once the task was done. Without fail, every semester the professor would pick which board was randomly-generate with a die vs. chosen by the students. How? Actually random rolls produce streaks, runs of the same number many times in a row. For example, in the above experiment, the odds that you would get a streak of 3-in-a-row is just over 91%. In other words, it is very unlikely NOT to have streaks in the data, which is how the professor would always pick the right board.

You could simply be one of those people who got lucky on many dice rolls in a row. That’s the nature of chance. It’s such a simple idea, and yet incredibly difficult for us to wrap our heads around. I’m sorry to hear about your friend’s daughter. Sending you positive thoughts and heartfelt condolences.

It feels like I’m living on borrowed time.

I retired 5 years ago at age 64 because I saw so many of my friends and coworkers dying. They worked their entire lives and died before they retired. I didn’t want that to happen to me. Especially since my family members mostly have died young and I suffer from heart arrhythmias and have had 3 heart surgeries in the last 11 years.

The last 5+ years have been the best years of my life. So much fun. So sweet to be free from work to do whatever I feel like doing. I spend a lot of time in the out of doors enjoying nature’s fresh air and wild life. I’m so thankful for every new day.

Life is so precious.

I credit video games for a couple of my survivals… well, at least from not crashing a car. Mostly though, I’d say it’s from being danger-averse.

And also, of course, because everyone who’s around to wonder how they’re still alive, is necessarily still alive. We’d need to include the dead and their reflections to get the full picture.

Yes. I’ve cheated death at least 3 times but one of those was a car accident where I actually cheated death about 6 different ways in about 3 seconds.

I have looked back and realized I did quite a few things throughout my life that, in hindsight, seem like they were quite dangerous, or at least could have been. By today’s standards, I was just daring death to take me. But I’m still kicking. I have out-lived some people, and am still in the running with others.