What Keeps People Alive?

Mostly wonder and awe and discovering new things in their lives ongoing. If you can't wait to see whatever new thing is going to happen in life that is unexpected then likely you will stay interested enough to stay alive to an old age.

However, if you look at life only with foreboding then likely your life will be a short one.

When I look back at my life after almost 70 years so far I think of having many girlfriends between the ages of 15 and 25 when I settled down and married and had a son by age 26. But, mostly all the dating and stuff was about hormones and the fact that I was young and handsome and I was very kind and gentlemanly from almost dying twice already from whooping cough at 2 and blunt trauma childhood epilepsy from ages 10 to 15. Then this kept me from being drafted so I didn't have to worry about that during the Viet Nam War. So, this made my life different than most young men my age too.

I didn't have to die in Viet Nam or run away to Canaada or go to jail because I wouldn't be drafted like with many young men then. One of my friends who taught in East Los Angeles was a conscientious objector and taught in East Los Angeles sort of as his personal penance for not going to Viet nam then. He thought helping and teaching the poor was his calling instead of dying in Viet Nam or walking down the street talking to yourself the rest of your life because you were ordered to run over civilians with your army tank in My Lai Viet Nam.

But, what I'm proudest of at this point is my children. Some people are proud of their businesses and to some degree I am too but I wouldn't have started businesses likely if I hadn't had to support children in the first place.

So, in some ways my children (having them and raising them) made me have to think about them rather than myself and this kept me alive to take care of them and raise them. And now after they are all now at least 21 years of age and I'm almost 70 I look back and my conscientious objector friend died in 2006 and I miss him a lot because he was the one who most influenced me to go to college. And in college I found that life can be very interesting indeed because there is always more interesting things to learn and always more interesting people to meet all over the world.

So, as long as there are things that amaze you and interest you about life you will tend to keep going.

Am I proud of my life?

I'm mostly proud that I survived everything I did and I'm proud that all my children grew up and were smart enough and financially able to go to college so they could be interested enough in life to stay alive too ongoing and make a difference in their lives and mine and everyone else's.

I'm proud to have survived everything I had to. It's sort of like a long unexpected video game that you either survive or you don't.

I remember telling my friends at age 25 that I likely was going to continue to have a long series of girlfriends the rest of my life. A year later I was married with a son.

This is how crazy life actually can be.

Can you survive it and come out of the other end a whole person?

I did.