The civilized world today is much safer right now than it used to be.
In several posts on this blog I’ve talked about diseases conquered, technologies invented and then spread widely across a large amount of the public, etc. I’ve brought up thoughts like this: “In the cave days, the guy who held and kept the best cave for himself had the best shelter, no one else could have it if he could defend it. He may have even been able to attract more mates due to the fact that he was “cave-rich”, and some would argue, unfairly so. Now housing is standardized, and options for it are enormous, it’s to the point where we’re extremely competitive on how to decorate them.”

Despite this people are, without a doubt, still being born with less than advantageous situations, and accidents do happen. Yes! Despite our technological advances, life still is not fair.

As you read this, there are people who are blind or deaf. People of all ages will be diagnosed with cancer. Parents will find out their child is developmentally disabled this week. A couple will find out they cannot naturally have children. Someone will find out their relative now has aphasia, likely due to a head injury, and they will have great difficulties communicating with others, probably for the rest of their lives. Some are born mentally handicapped. Some will be diagnosed with a rare disease, perhaps one that eats their flesh. You would think those with good health and blessed to be in good situations, especially in today’s world where we have so many goods services and systems to explore- would be  appreciative of what they have? (I mean, really appreciative, not paying lip service to the idea in conversation). You would be wrong in that assumption.

There are many videos on the web of idiots doing dumb things. But this one, for some reason sticks with me. Skip to about 25 seconds if you don’t care to wait:

I don’t understand why people take their good health for granted, their fortunate situations for granted, and begin to risk it, for what? It’s one thing to be horribly injured, and to risk it in pursuit of an achievement. Things like this happen on the battlefield. Many of those things you can read here, where you can see the Medal Of Honor Citations: http://www.history.army.mil/moh.html To a lesser extent (To be fair here just about, oh, almost anything-else is going be lesser by comparison)  we have sacrifices in professional sports. Shown here is Matt Stafford suffering what could be a grievous injury and playing through it. (Skip to 3:40ish if you’d like).

In stories like these, sacrifices were made for a reason- such is understandable and often admirable. But when you’re say, jumping in front of a bus, for no reason? I can’t help but shake my head.