We returned to our base of operations in Portland and of the past 24 hours or so I have slept at least 16 hours which is good because it is keeping me out of the hospital. Didn't eat anything but water for about 16 to 20 hours either. This seemed to be what my body needed to recover from what appears to be Bronchitis. My present wife of 20 years made an interesting comment. Her point of view was what my counselor had said to me 20 years ago when I was going through a really bad divorce at the end of a 15 year marriage. She said, "When really bad things happen to you you usually get sick because the alternative is you go crazy." So, if you get sick it is a good sign that you are functioning properly and not going crazy.
As I thought about this it made perfect sense to me. Also, another funny thing is my now ex-wife and I had a one hour conversation recently for the first time in about 10 years. So, this is a good thing too.
One of the things to all young people or people of any age that I would like to say to you. The most important qualities to a long life are adaptability, compassion for yourself and others, and finding a way to be efficient in every moment in the way you help yourself and others.
You have no idea at all what the future will bring you. Your dreams are only fantasies that may never be realized. So, unless you are very adaptable and compassionate to yourself and others you aren't going to survive very long. This is just the way life really is. For every dream that dies others can spring up spontaneously to replace them. Always remember this if you want to live a long life. Life is an Adventure. And an adventure is difficult circumstances well met and well survived.
My friend Vincent Cooper who during the 1980s fished in Alaska on the Big Fishing boats like on the ones on TV reality shows and then lived like a king in Asia for 6 months and kept doing this throughout the 1980s as far as I know told me to adventures of his which shows how extreme things can get in all this.
His first story was how he was crossing over into Tibet from Nepal on a Bus and they came upon another bus at 20,000 feet in the Himalayas. However, everyone was dead in the other bus because it had broken down and since no one could breathe much at that altitude they all soon were dead. No one rescued these people or even recovered the bodies or the bus. It was just too hard at 20,000 feet to do this. So, at this point they all were mummified by the high Altitude and freeze dried. This was what made me not want to take this route with my family to Lhasa and why we didn't go into Tibet as a family in 1986 and instead stayed in Nepal and India for 4 months instead. There were no flights from Katmandu to Lhasa then available for westerners yet. Lhasa is at 12,000 feet. A friend of mine, and older lady about 72 wanted to go to Lhasa. But, as she got off the plane at 12,000 feet she dropped dead from the altitude. She went to my church then in the 1980s. Father Charlie was the Pastor. They had a heck of a time getting her body back to relatives here.
Vincent survived the trip to Lhasa and Back but all the people in the other Bus died (70 to 100 people) were permanently freeze dried in the bus at that altitude. My friend, the 72 year old lady who had dreamed of going to Lhasa died there after flying into 12,000 feet because she hadn't prepared for the altitude by staying for a month or more someplace like Flagstaff Arizona or Santa Fe, New Mexico both are around 7100 feet in altitude.
The last time I spent a night in Santa Fe, New Mexico with my son in 2011 at the La Fonda we both had headaches from the altitude and decided to leave after only one night there and went to Winslow, Arizona which is between 4000 and 5000 in altitude where neither of us had a headache from the altitude.
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