Soylent Green

Today I will be spend knitting in a hospital waiting room. My friend is having a procedure that is not in itself scary but does require some major slicing and dicing and should tell us (though not immediately) if it's something much worse. I'm scared, and I'm not the one being chopped up. Isn't there some rule against young, spry people having terrible diseases? There's so much else to worry about when you're a 20-something, and almost everything is a beginning. At least, the things you have to choose are about beginnings - careers, significant others, babies, where and how to live your life. And we act like it's all within our control, simply a matter of deciding and finding and doing. But whether it's fate or God or random variation or a powerful malicious monkey, there's just so much mortality thrown in there, mocking our choices and making them for us. Things our bodies do and don't do that we not only failed to take into account, but that make all our accounting seem silly and frivolous. We try so hard to explain and justify and ignore our mortality because we need to cope. The Unknown is terrifying. I am terrified. Part of me wants to "take the blue pill" and ignore such mortality and complete lack of control, but how can I? It's the choice to pretend it's all a choice, and I'm not even sure I wish it was a choice.

All this and more will remain unresolved. Frustrating.