Trying to Fathom the Amazingness of Life

 We all start the same in our mother's womb. Then if we are lucky enough, we are born here somewhere on earth. Then if we are really lucky then our mothers (and hopefully our fathers take care of us well enough so that we can grow up and do something good with our lives for ourselves and others.

Often, I think about how amazing it is that any of us at all live to be 70 or more with our senses intact (both physical, spiritual and mental and emotional).

The traumas we all face in life take their toll along the way. I remember how young people tended to die in the 1950s. Now often when I see someone my age (mid 70s) they remind me of how people often were in their 40s in the 1950s.

Why is this true?

I think people had to grow up much faster to survive at all in the 1950s. For example, World War II was horrific for pretty much everyone on earth and this likely cut off years of most people's lives just having to deal with all that at all. And before that it is debatable but i might say the "Great Depression" in it's own way was worse than World War II in that you were watching people basically starve to death all over the U.S. without jobs living in tents alongside of rivers during the winter unless you had either a business or a job both of which were hard to come by in the 1930s if you hadn't already established yourself in the 1920s when things were better.

So, I'm amazed by really basic things like I was in the dentists office the other day because about 1/3 of one of my back molars had broken off unexpectedly and I mentioned to someone in the office that I was really surprised to still have most of my teeth simply because most people I knew in the 1950s had only half or less of their teeth in their mouths and many had full plates of false teeth then and if they didn't have full plates of teeth then they had bridges between existing teeth where teeth had had to be pulled.

Why?

Because Root canals were not as common then as now for people (at least here in the U.S.).

So, this is just one of the amazing things about surviving from the 1950s to now with medical care so amazing in so many ways now beyond anything we could have or would have believed in the 1950s.

I got used to watching friends of all ages from babies to 20 something adults die a lot growing up. This was very hard on everyone. But, as people now generally live longer and longer it is really surprising how long people can live now and be relatively okay.