{"id":469,"date":"2013-09-14T21:10:53","date_gmt":"2013-09-14T21:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=469"},"modified":"2025-06-24T09:13:30","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T09:13:30","slug":"invulnerability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/invulnerability\/","title":{"rendered":"Invulnerability"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 18th Century Benjamin Franklin famously said that “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes<\/em>” – many of us go through much of our life paying much attention to taxes, but paying scant attention to death.<\/p>\n

It is, of course, something that is not entirely pleasant to dwell on. My diagnosis has, I guess, certainly made me much more aware of my own mortality. Of course we each know – intellectually at least – that we are going to die one day, however that can always be thought of as sometime in the future – hopefully the far future.<\/p>\n

As youngsters we assume an air of invulnerability – nothing can get us – death is a long way off – its what happens to “old” people.\u00a0 Even when we are unfortunate enough to know some who die young it is often shrugged off as being the exception that proves the rule and – given that only a small proportion die young – perhaps it even increases that feeling of invulnerability because we reckon the odds have increased in our favour.<\/p>\n

When people are given the news that they have some serious disease we often hear that they re-evaluate what is important to them.\u00a0 They make a “bucket list”, or they devote their life to some charitable cause to help others.<\/p>\n

Personally I think that the idea of a bucket list is a non-starter as I wouldn’t know what to leave off.\u00a0 There are, lets face it, so many things that are now possible – how can you possibly choose which make the list and which are discarded?<\/p>\n

I am fortunate in that my disease will respond to treatment, so although it has focussed my mind a bit, there is no way that I am looking at it as a death sentence – well, no more than being born is a death sentence \ud83e\udd14.\u00a0 It will, hopefully not significantly impact my quality of life for a long time, so perhaps I can in some ways afford to be treating it all a “less urgent”.<\/p>\n

Regardless of that – it certainly brings close the idea that – yes – you might die at any time.\u00a0 Some of my treatment involves a small risk of contributing to my death.\u00a0 So even what is beneficial can also be shortening your life span.\u00a0 I have decided that, contrary to what you might expect, my diagnosis has actually increased my life span!!<\/p>\n

I can hear you asking – how do you figure that out?<\/p>\n

Well, six months ago I was happily living my life – with a completely undiagnosed disease eating away at me.\u00a0 In June, someone spotted what it was, in August I started having treatment to remove it from my system for the time being – even though it will likely return – so, all in all, I am in a better position now than I was six months ago – and I am sure that the nature of these things are such that the longer it takes to diagnose the less successful the treatment is.<\/p>\n

With the ‘wisdom’ of age comes the realisation that just maybe we all took things too much for granted when we were young – the opportunities we were presented with were, perhaps, not given the attention they really deserved.\u00a0 That applies in all sorts of areas of our lives.<\/p>\n

When young we get the ‘freedom’ to do lots of things, to go lots of places, to meet lots of people – as we age and greater responsibility is heaped upon us these become less – for most people – some are lucky enough to maintain that ‘freedom’.\u00a0 I wonder whether they necessarily appreciate it quite as much as the folks who have lost it.<\/p>\n

Looking back I can see lots of great things that have happened to me – perhaps there were some that I should have made more of at the time, perhaps not.\u00a0\u00a0 Now this, of course is getting back to the subjects that I addressed in\u00a0If Only<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Only If<\/a>.\u00a0 Whether I made the most of them or not – that was how I got to\u00a0this\u00a0<\/strong>point in my life rather than some other place.\u00a0 Would I change it – given that there is significant chances of those other places being worse than where I am – very unlikely!!<\/p>\n

Those life choices, of course, may also have contributed to my cancer.\u00a0 Even there it is difficult to say with any certainty that changing ‘just one thing’ would really make a difference.\u00a0 I am happy with where I am – I am happy with my situation – I am happy to realise my\u00a0 vulnerability, my mortality.<\/p>\n

In particular, my life choices have given me a wonderful family and a great set of friends – it would be\u00a0very\u00a0<\/strong>hard to make a decision that would change any of that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 18th Century Benjamin Franklin famously said that “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes” – many of us go through much of our life paying much attention to taxes, but paying scant attention to death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[83,90,103,119],"class_list":["post-469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ignorance","tag-faith","tag-health","tag-philosophical","tag-worldview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2943,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions\/2943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}