Do you know how many ways there are to put yourself in harm's way? I was floored by just a few of these U.S. statistics!
Being Murdered: 1 in 11,000
Being Robbed: 1 in 400
Being Burglarized: 1 in 50
Women dying in childbirth: 1 in 12,500
Death from earthquake or volcano: 1 in 11 million
Death From Leaking Gas: 1 in 12 million
Injury in an elevator: 1 in 6 million
Death from ingesting detergent: 1 in 23 million
Infection from flesh-eating bacteria: 1 in 170,000
Being hit by a meteor: 1 in 150 trillion
Of course, these are just a few ways that someone can really mess with their mortality in a big way. The statistics make death by any one way fairly rare. But combine all the ways to off yourself, and the chance of dying is probably close to 1 in 100 at any given time. Yet up until recently, people were OK with taking chances. It seems so interesting that for the past 2 months, people have severely curtailed their risk-taking activities. Yet, it hasn't prevented deaths from happening from things other than Covid-19. People are still getting killed doing crazy things. Car accidents still happen, drownings still happen, plane crashes, and murders still happen!
I guess what that tells me is that no matter how careful you are, no matter how much the government tells you to stop risky behavior, the fact is some people are going to die. What else does that say to me? I need to live life the best way I know how, in the safest way I know how, but above and beyond that, I can't prevent my own demise. I will die when I die.
My goal, then, is to make sure that I'm not afraid of death, that I'm prepared to die and that I've made peace with those I need to make peace with. Do I want to go quietly or do I want to go out with people actually missing me? I think the latter. How do I do that? I'll take a cue from this quote: "How carefully most men (and women) creep into nameless graves, while now and again one or two forget themselves into immortality." --Phillips Brooks
If we (note: we=I) could just forget for 2 seconds about how we look or how we feel or how we are perceived by others in favor of just going out and making someone else's day a little bit brighter, I think that our problems would seem a little less significant all of a sudden!
So maybe along with the prioritizing, financial goal setting, social posturing, dream boards and self-affirmations, we set aside some time to wonder how best we can serve another! Then when we do die, whatever way that may be, we'll have really lived to the fullest!
Today is "My Post Monday!", a curation of my picks of the week's best original content. It's
all about posts from Crafts to Camping, Wellness to
Wealth, Fashion to Food, and whatever else is on the brain! I
open up with a post of my own and then follow it up with a linky of the
week's top original blog posts! It's all about what the writer thinks,
believes, and
knows--in other words, they are active, writing blogs. If
I happen to find a great original, non-sponsored post, I'll link it up
and share
it with you
here and on Twitter via the #MyPostMonday hashtag! I can miss some amazing posts, but I don't want to!
So, in addition,
if you'd like to link up yourself, you can do that too! I'll visit your
site, comment, promote and publicize(Affiliate links welcome)
Posts
