I’ve been told a number of times that I’ve been unlucky with what’s happened to me.
And I have.
I’ve got a rare form of cancer, at a relatively young age. It’s Aggressive. And Chemotherapy Resistant. Incurable.
That’s not a great combination in anyone’s book. But since day 1 I have not wanted to destroy my remaining time by being bitter and angry about what’s happening. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t believe in God (in any form), so I’m not expecting an afterlife. For me, this is it. I have this experience – a brief blip in the vastness of space and time which I’ve been aware of – and that’s it. As far as I am aware, 2026 will be much the same as 1969 was for me.
One thing that has really helped me feel more positive about my situation is looking at the number of people who have ever lived. Estimates vary, but it’s about 120 billion. An astronomically high number. And most of those people lived short, hard lives and died in a variety of no doubt painful and drawn-out ways.
Moreover, there are millions (probably billions) of people alive today who would swap their lives for mine – yes, including the timescale and the ending. There are countless stories of death and abuse available to us at any time – just go to the news site of your choice and you’ll find one straight away, happening to someone who you don’t know, but whose life is as real to them as yours is to you.
Of course I would have loved more time with T – the woman I love, who I married, who has shown me what love truly means, and who has helped me grow as a person in ways that I never thought possible. And to spend more time with the kids, watching them grow up, get married, have kids of their own. To be ‘Grandaz’ as I was told I would be called. But you don’t get to choose.
We all live under the illusions that we are in control of how our lives go, and live as if we will live forever. The latter illusion disappears as soon as we examine it, because we don’t even know anyone who reached 200, let alone infinity.
But the first illusion – that of control – is one which is only dispelled when things beyond our control upend our lives. I’ll be honest, I’ve felt for a long time that I’ve been aware of it, but only really lived it since I went to Africa.
In 2004 I worked for 3 weeks for someone in Tanzania, teaching music and recording for a ‘charity’. It was really the guy in question trying to set up a business (and if I can find the files I may resurrect my blog of what happened), but some of the time I spent with the people there made it really hit home. It was just pure blind luck that meant that I was born in a comfortable country where the government wasn’t corrupt, where infrastructure worked, and where healthcare was easily available. I know it’s easy to argue all those points, but go to anywhere in sub-saharan africa and make objective comparisons with the UK and you’ll know what I mean. Most of us live in a world that people would swap for in a heartbeat. Hence so many trying to get into this country by any means, and dying on the way.
And none of that was anything to do with me. I wasn’t responsible for my birth, gender, intelligence, and most importantly the society I was born into which meant I could do pretty much what I wanted to. With no other variables changed other than my birthday, I could have been active in WW2 either as a Lancaster crew member (44% of whom died in combat) or taking part in the D-Day landings (with about a 45% survival rate depending on where you landed and what time).
None of the positives I have been blessed with were true for the people where I was, and even more so for some of the people I talked to who had come from other countries (Zaire springs to mind for one person I spoke to for a morning one day).
Reading popular physics books about quantum mechanics leaves you with the main impression that everything at that level is the sum of probabilities. And life is also the sum of probabilities. Yes, you probably will get to live to a decent age if you live in Western Europe. But it’s not guaranteed. And you may have precisely zero control over whether that happens.
You might be hit by a bus. Or a victim of a substandard piece of electrical equipment bought off Temu. Or killed by a stranger. These are all incredibly unlikely, but they are still possible.
I have been spectacularly lucky in many respects in my life. I was fortunate that despite being physically abused by my father, I never turned that on myself (I didn’t become a drug or drink addict as so often happens in these cases), and that he died before I was old enough to put up real resistance (or do what I had planned to do when I was older, which was to kill him). I’ve been hugely fortunate that I’ve somehow managed to cobble together a ‘career’ in which I have earned most of the money I’ve made from things that I love doing (playing/making/recording music and working with computers). I’ve been fortunate to make some life-long friends during adulthood and maintain those relationships and have some amazing experiences with these people. I’ve fulfilled two childhood dreams – of driving a car in the World Rally Championship (admittedly self-funded and not ‘competitively’, but I did it. Four times), and I’ve played the gigs I could only dream of, with a world-famous name who has turned out to be an inspiration and a generally all-round good egg who I can call a friend.
But over all of this, I not only somehow managed to meet someone to date via the internet when internet dating was in its infancy, but she turned out to be the most incredible person, and somehow got convinced to have a relationship with me, which blossomed into the best 15 years of my life, with a catalogue of experiences we’ve had together that are so numerous they would be difficult to document. We’ve been to so many places, and done so many things together. And we are the very best of friends. She is the best person I’ve ever met.
The odds of all of this happening are incredibly low – just ridiculously so. I’ve led a varied and interesting life. It’s just that I’ve been unlucky in one respect which means it will end much sooner than I (and those who love me) would want it to. But as I’ve said many times since this started, you don’t get to choose. You just have to play the hand you’re dealt to the best of your abilities.
