Friday Jottings-One Life?

Though I wrote the below column a few years ago I think it's still relevant. It does seem as if some people today think we should all live the same life, walking in lock-step with everyone else. Never having an original thought, parroting the same things, never deviating from what 'everyone knows.' In my opinion this would be a very dull world without individuals who might see things differently from what I, for instance, think is obvious. Various personalities, abilities, even appearances create a wonderful mosaic in which we all may seek our own path, as long as we don't blungeon those who may differ in an attempt to force them to see things our way.

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We hear the adage that all of us have one life to live. In one sense, that's entirely true. Unlike the video games young people and even some adults spend hours engrossed in, we don't die and come back to life, ad infinitum. In real life, due to accident or extreme illness, a heart may stop unexpedtedly and is shocked back to a regular beat by doctors or emergency personnel. But this is not an everyday experience  in most people's lives.

Looked at in another way, if we live out a normal lifespan, we do live more than one life. Nine months, usually, in the wombs of our mothers where we are indeed alive, our hearts beat, we move around, we suck thumbs, as shown by the miracle of ultrasound.

After we're born, infancy, crawler, toddler, climber. By the age of six, such astounding physical and mental development occurs that some researchers say we have acquired a very large percentage of all that we will ever learn. Thereafter we're learning many other things we will need to live out life as an adult.

All through this development and learning we are living different lives. A person may be an only child, for whatever reason. They never live life as a brother or sister, of one, two or seven siblings, as I had. Our life as a student at school is wholly different from home life. College is again another new life. Job, maybe marriage, divorce, death, other life events propel us into other lives, which we may never have expected to live.

Even someone who never marries and lives with family as an adult must eventually live another life if parents become unable to care for themselves. Then child becomes parent, and in the normal course of events, becomes the survivor who must learn to live on their own.

In modern life, we're given the opportunity to have many more lives than most of our forebears. I believe this is a good thing.