For many years I have
regarded life itself as a sufficiently large gamble without scratching at the
itch of fate that bleeds doom, despair and despondency.
We gamble every time we make
a decision involving our lives. Spending hard earned cash to line someone
else’s acquisitive pocket is not, to my mind, a satisfactory manner in which to
proceed.
Of course, we pour money into
another person’s coffers every time we make a purchase—that is reasonable. We
choose what we want; we evaluate the worth of that purchase and then, if we are
male and need it we buy.
Women have a slightly
different logic. If an item is on sale for a large percentage of the list price
cut from the tag then they will buy it. Men will pay over the odds for an item
they need.
Similarly, haggling over the
price is a female thing; men will not debase themselves by pleading poverty
even if it is an abstract idea.
Thus we exchange currency in
the form of cash, cheque or plastic for an item that we then take home.
If we gamble we only take
home a piece of paper that says, “You have just lost $X (or
£/Baht/Rupiah/Yuan/etc.). We thank you for your custom.”
Inherent, and inferred, in
that statement is the message, “Goodbye, Sucker! Come again—soon.”
Every time we get into our
cars or walk down the street we take a gamble. We never know what is the other
side of the minute hand on our watches. This presumes that we are not wearing a
digital watch.
As a digression: I have
superb watch but I cannot wear it. My beloved wife purchased it for me but was
doubtful whether it would actually go around my substantial wrists. The sales
assistant demonstrated how long the strap was by encircling it around her upper
arm thus proving that it would fit me. It did not. I have, like most Engine
Fitters, robust wrists.
There are many people who
dislike taking risks. They fear to take a dip into the unknown preferring the
company of the known, the unchanging.
But life is constantly
changing. Life is a series, almost day-to-day, of changes of a requirement for
us to adapt.
Many years ago, when I was
small, the shop owner of Carter’s hardware store in Budleigh Salterton showed
me a small plastic box with a dial on it.
When I asked what it was he
told me that it was a radio. How I laughed!
Radios are big and run off
the mains electricity or, at the very least, a tractor battery.
He tuned it on. Music came
out. I was agape.
I wanted to know where the
battery went. He showed me this small battery inside.
“How long does that last?” I
enquired—thinking that it would be, perhaps, a minute, or so.
“At full volume, left ‘on’?
About a week,” he said.
I was stunned. My first
transistor radio.
Only a short while previously
I had seen an aeroplane fly overhead, from Exeter airport, that had propellers
but there was no loud engine sound.
My first turbopropeller
powered aircraft.
Since then life has been full
of changes. Hand-held telephones, computers, lap-tops, iPads and pods, satellite television, revelations in new systems and psychologies of Aircraft Maintenance.
We adapt.
Life is a gamble. Always. We
take our lives in our hands every time we set out to go somewhere; not just to
the corner store or to exotic new locations but everywhere.
Each time that we venture out
we enter a new risk phase.
People often do not want to
take risks. They often want to live quietly and peacefully somewhere safe. Yet
they are constantly taking risks because life is a gamble.
I am reminded, on a frequent
basis, that people are frightened of change. They fear the unknown in life.
They tell me, from time to time, that they are unworthy; that life is not fair;
that they should never have been born in the first place because they are
miserable.
Let me just do a swift
calculation for you:
Odds Against Being Born:
400,000,000
sperms per ejaculate.
From
age 15 to 70 average one ejaculate every two days
55years
x 365 + 14 (Leap Years) = 20,089 ejaculates
+
8,035,600,000,000 sperms
If
you are the only child that means the odds of you being born and not someone
else was:
8,035,600,000,000:1
Now
factor in the eggs!!!
Those odds are astronomical.
You stand far more chance of winning the lottery than of being born. You are
already a winner just by the very fact of your existence.
But I still don’t buy lottery
tickets. I believe I’ve already won the big one—no point in pushing it, is
there?
