I am an engineer, by heart and education, and as such I like to quantify everything. However I lacked philosophy in my life until I realized that I was not immortal.
My father, in contrast, is a theologist, a philosopher, a tireless reader who can separate wisdom from ignorance in a second. He loves to say that statistics is the prostitute of science. That would always come as a big blow to my quantifying ears but today I understand what he means.
When poorly used anything can be prostituted, with all respect to the oldest profession on Earth.
This week I talked to a saddened mother that was told by several doctors that her son had X, Y or Z years of life. When a company advertises a product claim it needs to place disclaimers everywhere, yet when doctors tell patients how long they expect the patient to live there are no disclaimers. What a non-sense.
About Science (Statistics)
All the statistics doctors share are based on clinical studies, and therefore are an extrapolation of what has been observed over a population not controlled for age, tumor size, location etc., and most importantly, the individual's own characteristics.
Patients insist in asking doctors life expectation stats and under pressure doctors feel compelled to provide an answer, particularly the less experienced ones. This is a common mistake in every profession. We are trained in school that if we don't provide an answer we are wrong, so most professionals feel more compelled to answer a question with a wrong answer than to say "I don't know", as the latter might be perceived as lack of competence.
If I were to live by a set of poorly used statistics let's see what would be different in my life:
- Biking: every day a person dies in São Paulo in a bike accident. I'd better stop riding if I want to escape death in a bike accident in São Paulo, a much more likely death cause than brain tumor;
- Driving: every day more than one person dies in São Paulo in a car accident. I'd better stop driving if I want to escape death in a car accident in São Paulo, a much more likely death cause than brain tumor;
- Eating: I once heard that the more we eat the shorter we live, as every time we eat we produce free radicals that make us age biologically faster. But how could I survive without food? Isn't this an example of beating up the dog to kill the fleas?
- Drinking: This one I can live without, people that drink are likely to live less, but I have to say that my College experience would have been completely different if I didn't drink. Today I only drink non-alcoholic beer, but nonetheless drinking is part of our western social fabric and the socialization that happens around drinks is part of our Modern Western Society;
- Having Kids: had I know that I had a brain tumor 10 years ago, the likely age of my tumor, I would not have had kids. How sad would my life be without my girls, and would I ever be willing to sentence my wife to a life without kids?
About Philosophy (Religion)
I was never religious but growing up in a Christian family I was of course heavily influenced by Jesus Christ. Right before my surgery in Montpelier we were driving to Milau and spotted a small village called Le Caylar where we stopped to visit an old castle. When we got to the village a little cat came to us and meowed profusely. We followed the cat, the picture below is a proof that this happened!
As we followed the trail we arrived at a statue of Jesus, something that had a profound meaning to me, not so much for the circumstances that lead us there - a cat leading a hike - but for the inspirational effect that made me put in perspective how little I was suffering relative to what Jesus suffered when he was crucified.
About Purpose
What could have made Jesus endure so much? How could a man carrying a heavy cross in a dry, cold land while being tortured later be described as forgiving so many people? Jesus knew that he was God's son. According to Jesus himself so are all of us. Whether Jesus was truly or not the Messiah that came to rescue the Jewish people from apocalypse is completely irrelevant, the matter of fact is that a 33 years-old man born 2012 years-ago completely changed the world. I already outlived Jesus by 5 years and feel like I have so much to do! If you can live and believe that you are the son of God you will have the strength to endure anything, you will never give up. And the best way to change the world is by being a great role model. No, this is not an attempt to save souls, just a demonstration of the power that faith has in life when well used.
About Our Social Fabric
Christianity was spread throughout Europe as a unifying force for the Roman Empire. As diverse people as Huns, Gaelics, Brits and Saxons resisted the Roman Empire there was a need to create something in common for all these tribes to keep the Roman Empire united, and Christianity was used as a unifying force.
Years later the Dark Age came and the Roman church tried to burn anything not endorsed by it. I was once in Turkey and a friend I met there explained to me how the Ottoman Empire saved several pieces of ancient western history from being burned as Europe was immersed in ignorance and intolerance. Centuries later we are once again engulfed by religious fundamentalism in many different fronts, the most visible being obviously Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism.
We need threads to keep us together as social organisms, to compound our individual abilities with the power of collaboration. National identify, race, gender, religion and political views have been traditional forms of social fabric. We need to accept that we are both individuals and pieces of a social fabric, but we cannot let our social fabric overcome who we are as individuals.
If we live a life believing that society is the sum of the individuals and refusing to believe that individuals are fragments of society with no control over it we can live with a whole lot more purpose.
Conclusion - Forget About Life Expectancy, Focus on Driving Your Life
As I confronted death for the first time I could not accept that we are merely a set of chemical reactions living among many others. I was told by a neurologist that "today we know that the separation between brain and mind does not exist, we are just the brain". What a sad way to see life.
In the car of life we can pick two seats, the passenger seat or the driver's seat. We can also drive by looking at the rear-view mirror or looking forward and picking the roads that take us to where we want to go. Statistics are simply a way to try to predict the future based on past observations. When we resign ourselves to live by statistics we condemn ourselves to the passenger seat and the rear-view mirror, by definition.
Don't give up on life, we don't know what is going to happen to us and therefore should always strive to do the best with the cards we are dealt. The fact that we don't control most of what happens in our life does not mean that we should resign ourselves to doing nothing, to a constant state of apathy.
The minute we quit is the minute we die, and life is too precious for us to quit before dying. Never let a doctor sign your death sentence before you die, live like there is no tomorrow but always remember that there is a pretty good chance that you will still be around tomorrow to see what you are doing and that your legacy might last over 2000 years if you are good.
