Chances, Options, and the Presence

I cam across an old TED talk by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert. From what I know about my future (close to nothing) I can only agree with him, "our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong". In my particular case, I am somewhat worried about dying from a consequence of the gene defect, more from the uncertainties of how and when. But it seems not unlikely that my week-daily bike rides bring about a much higher risk of death, including painful death, including life long severe disabilities than the defect. In this sense, I found Gilbert's slide impressive where he contrasts the images of an crashed airplane, a 9/11 skyscraper, a house destroyed by an earthquake - and a swimming pool. Statistics has it, the swimming pool is far more dangerous than any of the other. Actually, he could have included fire weapons, the hallmark of ever discussed US American freedom of citizens. According to "Freakonomics", you should be really worried if your child meets a friend whose parent have a swimming pool compared to the parents owning a fire weapon: "children are 100 times more likely to drown in a backyard pool than they are likely to die while playing with a gun."

The only problem, we are irrational beings. And as one contributor in the discussion with Gilbert mentions, the master equation in the theory of decisions (the expectation value as product of likelihood and gain) does tell us as much about the perceived (v.s. abstract) reality as the fundamental equations of quantum particles, symmetry laws, and the like: Nothing.
It hurts when you hit the floor and it does not help that Pauli's principle is responsible* for the "hardness" of the floor and your body - as you both are more than 99% nothing, space-wise.
*it is only an explanation, but this is how I mistreat principles, sometimes.
My expectation value is my_likelihood multiplied by my_gain. If you ask patients of, what we call bad and grave illnesses, their_gain might not be as negative as our_gain anticipated. Which might correspond with the fact that their_likelihood is at 100%.

Currently, I find it hard to readjust to a "realistic" perspectives on the future. Half an hour ago I had this disturbed vision that comes from a bad circulation in the retina. The awareness of bike-risk is not a day-to-day companion as the "other". And there is more routine and practice to avoid the bike-risk. The other is hard to avoid as reasons, causes, and interdependencies of PV are not (yet) researched. So, there is always room for speculation to fall in.

If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him!

Of course I neither met, nor did I even try to kill him. Mr. Gautama is dead. Since more than 2.5 thousand years. But since the last post, I also did not kill the ZEN master whom I did meet in the meantime. Quoting numerous scientific, medical, and statistical studies, he made a big point about the healthy effects of transcendence, love, and compassion.
Yes, our second nature is the social network of other human beings. No, I see no need to have these on the same level like daily exercise or healthy eating, i.e. as measure of medical prevention. But no doubt, I currently experience a state of medical extraordinary that makes me think about quintessences of life, such as transcendence, love, and compassion. Even to the point where I start to question most of my previous goals. Just recently, I saw a documentary on quite intelligent people who at some point in their life stopped working altogether. There was a medical doctor who decided that it is not the meaning of life to work each day to empty the waiting room of all ill people, to go home tired and in expectation of the next day's daily grind. I started a new job not half a year ago, I study for another academic degree, I still do a lot of things where I am not that sure whether, and how much, these are really necessary.
"If things are not necessary to do, it is necessary to not do them".
There are other things, where I do not even think about whether these are necessary. Like art (I had the chance to see the original above one year ago in Madrid. It is a lot of fun to see, and you have to be quite careful with your ankles if you try to re-enact the posture of the women to the right :D). These are just outside this category. Maybe this is the way to go. Maybe I need some life re-engineering or retrofitting - buzzwords of my professional career.

BTW, the image to the right shows the above mentioned ZEN master (to the left) with one of the first of this kind from the Western culture, an ordained Jesuit priest. I see no reason to kill one of them; of both, one can learn a lot.

Reality Check & Continued Lists

Time is passing, as if nothing has happened. Spring arrives and without the knowledge about the disease, everything would be ... just like last year. Actually, this is the only measurable difference. Most likely, I have had the genetic defect for more than three years.
No surprise, the difference is all in my mind. No big revelation, in the end, what is not only in my mind?
Slowly, I try to catch up with the previous everyday life. Today, I even managed to bike to work, pretending that the pain in my toe is ... just in my mind.
Those close to me redirected my attention to the big pros of this disease. As a short list, I will not die after a long unconscious state of e.g. Alzheimer's disease, I will not die for sheer boredom or loneliness. Actually, there is a bunch of really bad things and suffering, I will most likely not experience.
Today, I also got an update on the blood values that are now artificially monitored. Those values that make my blood highly viscous, causing things like the thrombosis are approaching normal values. Which matches the experience that every time I am bleeding, it takes 10 times longer as before until this stops.

A few weeks from now and most likely, I will be able to live my everyday life as before. Hence, the real problem is, has and will be, my mind. Tonight, I will have the chance to see one of the few ZEN masters here where I live (You guess correct, I am not living in Japan :D). Most likely, this will not inspire me to continue any of these list. I guess, I have to expect the unexpected or even trivial, i.e. the one moment in time. It is very hard to be prepared for this, as it seems too easy.