This morning a friend of mine called to talk about a cancer scare he’s dealing with. We discussed the future, wills, and other matters for a while so he could get back on a less shaky ground. It put me on the back foot a bit, but I had most of the page completed, so it didn’t affect my schedule all that much. It certainly sapped my energy though. My peers and I are reaching that age where when you pass away people are progressively less surprised by it. We’re of that generation that will likely live shorter lives than our parents because of various factors beyond our control. Obviously I worry, but at the same time I’m not always all that disappointed that my life expectancy is so much shorter than it was for a generation prior to me.
I feel like I’ve been purposely lied to a lot of the time, and misled without malice for much of the remainder. My parent’s advice to me was good for the world as it existed when they were young, but in retrospect I might well have done better if I simply kept playing video games and being verbally abusive to people, with the addition of filming it. I’ve always been one step behind on these cultural shifts. Never capable of being able to gather the tools required to accel until it’s just a little too late.
At this point my only goal as far as life expectancy is concerned is to outlive my parents, so that they don’t have to deal with my death. After that I have no expectation for anything more. A single man in the United States isn’t going to do all that well generally, and when you add in all the things wrong with me outliving my mother is seeming less and less achievable.
My grandparents outlived 50% of their children. Looking over the records my mother has uncovered for genealogical purposes that’s not that bad of a score historically. Of course our ancestors were having a lot more children so it may not be fair to compare those numbers. I think one of our great X? grandmothers had 11 to 14 kids. My grandparents had 4. My parents technically had 1. I’ve had zero and I’m not doing a very good job of managing myself, so the system is breaking down no matter how you do the math. Unfortunately some of us statistically must be evolutionary cul-de-sacs. I drew a bad hand and did the best with it I could. I’ve been bluffing for a long time but eventually the call will come.
Gotta know when to hold ’em, etc.

Anyway, that’s all as may be. Hopefully there are more days for you and I to enjoy as best we can before the reaper calls us home. Stay under his radar as best you can. Let’s meet up on Monday if we win hide and seek for another weekend, shall we?

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The reaper keeps hiding from me and that’s not fair.

He keeps hiding from my grandfather too and it’s starting to seem very cruel.

I worry about Gen Z & younger. Many of them start out disadvantaged by having parents who don’t even have the decency to vaccinate them (don’t @ me w your antivaxx BS), then work like a bugger for no slices of any pie. (Me, I’m tail end of the Boomers, but I won’t be able to retire like my grandparents could. I can’t afford a car or a mortgage, but I count myself well-off by getting by on only the one job.)
And yet, I can still afford a little every month to go to creators such as yourself, Jackie, and a few others. Dman good use of my spending budget.
Now – Ramon! Ramon? Huh, Ramon truly is in the mix, I thought that was just idle speculation. I love this interaction with Jess.

lol, don’t start with the politics then get mad if people respond with politics. Not really the place for it.

The anti-Vaxx movement isn’t politics, it’s anti science. Pure and simple. But if you think it’s a political topic, then you do you boo.

“It’s not political if the other side is stupid.” Well, dang, I guess gun control and immigration and tax policy isn’t political either, because everyone I disagree with is wrong!

Like yourselves and the original poster, I have lots of opinions on the matter- and similarly- nobody wants to hear them either.

Now I’m curious how old you are. I mean if your grandfather is still alive even I can’t imagine you’re all -that- old. My grandfather passed nearly a couple decades ago.

I have 7 kids though and I hope I don’t outlive any of them.

I will be 49 in March. If memory serves.

Whippersnapper!

They say the greatest tragedy a human can know is outliving their children. It’s unnatural. At LEAST outliving your parents is normal.

A weird saying since 50% infant mortality was the norm until like 100 years ago.

Not THAT weird. There may have been a LOT of infant mortality, but that doesn’t make it any less natural. A baby is supposed to grow up and live.

My mother was born in 1920 she lived to within a month of 90 years. She had 4 sisters and 5 brothers all of them lived well into their 80s and 90s. The generation that they bore began dying off in their 40s. I am 70 and in poor health. If I do see 80 it will not be a joyful time. I blame corporate greed for all the bad things. ~ulrich

I think Jess’ point to Ramon here is something that a lot of religious people struggle with, they expect “God provides” to mean they shouldn’t make moves toward their own goals and desires. If God works in mysterious ways, and the miracles are in the little things and require looking for them and all that, then clearly God providing for you or answering your prayers or whatever won’t always be obvious. They say that luck is the intersection of opportunity and preparation, if you aren’t prepared to notice and seize opportunities when they arise, your luck is bad, and if you seize opportunities when they present themselves, your luck is good, and whether you notice and are prepared to seize opportunities mostly depends on your mindset, if you think of yourself as lucky you are more open to seeing and taking advantage of opportunities than if you think of yourself as unlucky (this has been tested and found scientifically, it’s an interesting subject so if you want more info google the psychology of luck and you should find more info pretty easily).

I figure people like Ramon here use their faith as an excuse to not pursue their goals/desires, and I don’t mean in the classic “that is a sin so I won’t do it” way, but in areas like this where they are constantly waiting for God to give them what they want and as a result they don’t take opportunities when they present themselves. Having faith and trusting in God’s plan is all well and good, but you won’t get anywhere if you play a purely passive role in your own life, at some point you have to choose to act on things if you want them. God gave you free will, use it.

Precisely. God tells us to grow and improve ourselves in many different ways all throughout the Bible. Sitting back and passively waiting for others to do everything is the direct opposite of that.

What’s to say that being passive isn’t also an act of free will? I’m not saying that people should be passive, but it seems silly to mutually exclude will towards being active only.

The Reaper is just doing their job, like worldly decomposers do. I’ll keep a kettle and some tea handy to offer proper hospitality.

For now I’ll settle in and wait for someone to nitpick that accel/excel wordplay.

I’ve had the 13th comment for a few pages so I decided to maintain the streak.

/cheer

To make sure I didn’t miss something, There was a reference to the Ramon incident. I’m not clear what Ramon did that caused did wrong by Jess. Or am I just not connecting enough dots?

It’s not been explained yet beyond what the two implied during their talk a couple comics ago. There’s enough there to pretty much broadly infer what went down, though.

Fair enough, Appreciate the context.

2782 The Man In The Boat.

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