Time to rinse your hair

The extraordinary effect that a single, apparently irrelevant decision can have in our lives explain the ancestral need to know the future. Indubitably there are many situation that might have a great impact in our lives, even if we do not know it, but there are certain occasions where it is obvious that things can change dramatically depending on your choice: going to the university or looking for a job, proposing to that girl or keeping her as a girlfriend for a little bit longer, staying in your job or founding your own company, they are all big decisions and that is why we tend to look for advise and reassurances whenever we face them. Almost every ancient general carried with him not only his military advisors, but also a cohort of seers and diviners to gauge the mood of the gods before important battles, even making sacrifices to earn their favor and turn the fight for their side.

However, by far the most predicted and most feared event in life is, without question, death itself. When we are kids it sounds like a distant tale that only happens to other people. As we grow up we became aware that it will eventually reach us, but it still has a very distant ring. Even as we reach the age of retirement, most people have a reasonably justified to weak up the morning after; some fellows might have fallen along the way to accidents or inexplicable sicknesses, but it is still a rare event. But then, over time, it becomes more and more frequent and you are not surprised anymore when you hear that a school friend of yours has passed away, and then another. Because, regardless of what happens with us once we are dead (reincarnation, rise to heavens, blending with the Great All, you name it) it is clear that it is not here. And this awareness that "once you are gone, you are gone" is probably the reason why we have debated for millennia over ways to predict our own death.

Photo: Daniel Foster

Over the course of history there have been a number of myths about how life and death is decided, but probably the one I like the most is the ancient Greek story of the Moriai: the first one, Clotho, spins the thread of life of each of the mortals on a spindle; Lachesis, the second one, measures the length of thread assigned to each person with a measuring stick; and the third one, Atropos, decides the way each person dies and cuts their thread of life with the fateful shears. The idea that some entity even higher than the gods themselves was to determine in an unmovable way when and how we are going to die is, at the same time, a bit worrying (because it is already set) and relaxing (because there is little we can do to change it).

Modern medical science has showed that there are well established ways to shorten your life: exposition to highly toxic substances (poisonous, carcinogenic or radioactive) are just example; alcohol, tobacco and other chemicals are known to reduce your life expectancy roughly in proportion to the use you make of them. The main problem is that you never know how high the initial value is, because it varies highly from one person to the next. We have all heard of a super-healthy person who exercise regularly, did not drink or smoke, followed a healthy diet and did not take unnecessary risk and yet they die at the age of 35 from a brain tumor. Also the contrary is true: people who have smoked all their life and yet live past their 100th birthday. One can only wonder how long they would have lived if they had not smoked.

This disparity reminds me of the showers in the camping sites when I was a kid. I have not gone camping for a long time, but back them it was not uncommon that, in order to avoid wasting water, showers in the common facilities were coin operated so that everyone was encouraged to take a shower as short as possible. The problem is that when I arrived at a new site I never new how long the water was going to last, so I would always rush to shampoo and rinse my hair to ensure that I did not end up without water and with a head full of bubbles. Of course, once I had taken a couple of showers in the same site I was able to distribute my time much better (and I also caught stories from other campers like "the left-most shower always runs short"). Unfortunately, life is like taking one shower in a site you have never been to before: you might have a reasonable expectation of how long the water is going to last, but there is no guarantee, and it can also last way longer.

A couple of days ago a college mate of mine mentioned that his father had passed away. The  news was sad, but not terribly surprising, as my parents' generation is already in their 70s, but I was shocked to read that wherever he was now, he was with his daughter (my friend's sister) who died already more than ten years ago. I remember being dumbfounded back then, when I heard about her passing in her 30s, but somehow I had completely forgotten about it. At any rate I has served as a reminder that I should start to rinse my hair soon and try to fulfill my life goals soon, because we never know how much time we have left and I would not like to see myself in my dying bed thinking "what have I done with my life". Sorry for the glum tone, I hope tomorrow the post will come out jollier. Have a nice evening.