Tag: life

Comfortably Vague 

RilalyLeave a comment

“If you want to be hilarious, someone has to get hurt,” is something I used to say. “You can be slightly humorous with a knock-knock joke, and quick comebacks might earn you the title clever, but if you want to be truly hilarious, your goal should be offending people and grossing them out.” I used to think that, believe it, and say it all the time, because I thought it was provocative and so true, until I saw someone go after another. They were so savage that I realized causing someone actual pain was not as funny as the theoretical idea of it. I amended my theory by adding, “As long as you’re the victim, because there’s nothing better than a well-timed mean-spirited, self-deprecating joke.”

“And the comedy is in details,” I would add when I heard people keep their stories comfortably vague. “Why would you even tell me this great story about an embarrassing part of your life and leave out the details? That’s like going out to a restaurant and ordering potatoes with a side of broccoli. I like broccoli as much as the next guy, but what’s the difference between broccoli at a restaurant and broccoli at home? No one I know goes out on the town for a head of broccoli. We want the meat.”

When I say stories, I’m talking about those casual, fun stories that two fellas share while sitting in the stands at a baseball game. I’m talking about those tales that are so embarrassing that you may not know the comedic value of them until you say them out loud. They’re the funny ones that get the other fella laughing. Some of us leave out the details of those stories, because they reveal our vulnerabilities. Once we lay those tails out, and the other guy starts laughing his tail off, it can be strangely liberating. The two of us are there, mentally, picturing you in the moment while you remember all of the finer details of your truly embarrassing moment in life, and if you deprive us of those details, it’s the literary equivalent of slamming the door on the best room of your house as you give us a tour.

If you’re anything like me, and you’re in the midst of hearing one of these stories, we don’t want it to end, so we ask them leading questions. Not only do we want to be with them, in the moment, but we want to help them help us find their story entertaining. So, we ask leading questions, such as, “Really? What did you think of that?” or “How did that affect you?”

We ask specific, situational questions that specifically pertain to the other’s story, and some of us have asked these questions for so long that that’s just kind of who we are. We ask active listening questions that some might confuse with those from a psychotherapist, an investigator, or that incredibly annoying person who can’t let someone finish a story without asking five-to-ten questions while they’re trying to tell it. Unlike most quality professionals, however, we only ask such questions to serve the comedy of the story, as opposed to anything that serves a purpose. We’re not tracking our subjects through the trials and tribulations of their life to help them find their core, so they might find their way back to greater mental health. We just want the funny.

If you’re anything like me, you crave funny tales about foibles and failures, because there’s something so interesting about a person who is not afraid to let their guard down and tell you who he really is. We do have to be careful, or if careful isn’t the right word, and it usually isn’t when it’s just two fellas telling each other what a foible he is, how about strategic. We need to qualify such questions by saying, “We’ve all done stupid stuff. Trust me, we’ve all done what it takes to go from idiot to a total idiot.” When we drop a line like that, and we mean it, we develop a temporary bond that can lead our storyteller to test the parameters of that line. 

The only thing I love better than a story full of failure and foibles, is an in-depth exploration of those failure and foibles, and if you’ve read any other articles on this site, you know that I’m not the type to just sit there and feed on another’s carcass. I lead the charge and set the template. In doing so, I make the other person feel more comfortable talking about their own failures and foibles.

Once the two of us lay the groundwork of our hilarious misadventures, we spend the rest of the evening trying to top the stories we’ve both told thus far, and neither party cares why we’re trying to do that as long as they’re funny. This builds until somewhere around the second inning, we start to make a thematic connection. Then, somewhere around the fourth inning, after the second beer is partially consumed, the stories become a little more personal as we become a little more vulnerable, and we achieve the next plane of funny together. Shortly after that second round, we’ve also established the idea that we’re not just good listeners, we’re actively engaged in the other’s stories. The two of us become so good at it that we breed a level of trust and confidence in one another, until the competitive desires set in, and we try to make the other guy laugh harder than we did before. We don’t care if the details prove somewhat embarrassing at this point, so we dig deep into our story bank to find the most entertaining nuggets of our life so far. When they laugh, we know we’re really onto something. Neither of us knows what that something is, but we know it’s something worth exploring.

As much fun as these baseball nights can be, age and experience has taught me levels of restraint. I offer some of the details that I require of others, but I refrain from offering details that could prove so embarrassing that the next day at work is a little uncomfortable, and I expect them to do the same. I get as caught up as anyone else in these moments, but experience has taught me that there are details and there are details. Details are funny, as I’ve written, and they’re crucial to the quality story, but some details provide irreversible images that our audience will remember the next time they see us.

I’ve also learned firsthand, the hard way, to avoid too much poking and prodding, because once we convince a fella how entertaining he can be, some of us have trouble stopping. They’re not accustomed to someone finding them so interesting and entertaining, and their competitive desire to top their last story, or ours, can lead them to taking a step off that comfortably vague cloud and accidentally imprint an irreversible image in our brains.

When I’m in one of those conversations with a fella, and he’s dropping details of his failures and foibles on me, I’m so engaged that great plays and key moments in the baseball game we’re attending only serve to interrupt our fascinating discussion.

Roy and I talked about personal details from our lives, but we kept our details comfortably vague, because that’s just what fellas do at a baseball game. No one wants to lay out detail-oriented, personal problems at a baseball game, because we know no one wants to hear about all that at a baseball game. No one wants to go so deep that they end up with tears in their eyes at a baseball game, because as Tom Hanks said, “There’s no crying in baseball.”

Yet, most people can’t stop themselves. They have no governors on content, in the manner automobiles have governors on speed to prevent the vehicle from accelerating faster than programmed thresholds. They dig for more provocative details, because provocative details aren’t just funny, they’re hilarious, and what’s more provocative, embarrassing, and hilarious than misadventures in the bathroom?

Some people just love a great story about what happened to them during the waste removal process. The moment I start to hear them go down this road, my stop sign reflexively pops us, in the manner a stop sign automatically pops us when a train bypasses an indicator in its destination. I instinctively stop poking and prodding, and I try to change the subject, because I’ve learned that some men have no problem discussing their gastrointestinal issues (GI), as long as they’re funny, and they’re always funny to some. “Oh, c’mon, it’s nature!” they say. “Deer poop, dogs poop, even your beloved octopus has to excrete what its body can’t use.”

“That’s true, undeniably true, but for most of us their byproducts are not the reason we hike through nature preserves and swim in oceans,” I return. I say most of us, because I’ve met the exceptions on more than one occasion. I don’t know if it’s a talent, skill, or a preoccupation, but some men are wired in such a way that they can take any topic and turn it into a discussion of misadventures with waste removal.

Tommy Spenceri proved to me how pervasive his talent in this arena was when he told me about the highlight of a relatively expensive whale spotting cruise he attended. These cruises have become so popular that they’ve become an industry in some locales, generating over $100 million a year, and creating thousands of jobs for locals. Some of these tourists are almost spiritually moved at the very sight of the beast, others find the geyser of misty spray bursting skyward from its blowhole an almost religious experience, but Tommy’s wiring led him to find the size of the whale’s excrement the most memorable experience of that vacation. “You should’ve seen it, it was larger than my whole body,” he said with restrained excitement. “I’m serious, I could’ve dove into it Vitruvian Man and still not touched its outer rims.”

As the son of a man with such wiring, Tommy and Roy’s unusually obsessive preoccupation with the products of our biological functions was not new to me, but that didn’t mean I wanted to hear about it. So, the moment these discussions pop up, my stop sign follows suit. I switch my active listening skills into the off position, and I put the picks and shovels of my poking and prodding away. 

I’ve been relatively successful in this endeavor over the years, unless I’m at a baseball game drinking beer, and when I talk about beer I’m not talking about the standard beer that everyone drinks just to tie a buzz on. I’m talking about the delicious craft beer designed by master craftsmen who are so good at what they do that the results of their brainstorming, testing, and hard work go down so smooth that we miss all of the indicators that tell us to stop.  

I wasn’t drunk when the generally unappealing discussion of food poisoning began, but those delicious craft beers dulled my senses just enough that I accidentally ushered him on with my laughter. In a completely sober state, I know that the food poisoning discussion is a war story. It spawns the competitive, “You think you had it bad? Well, get a load of what happened to me,” as the two of us try to top one another with our experiences. Two beers in, and a discussion of food poisoning becomes a part of the funny conversations two fellas have at a baseball game. In that moment, Roy introduced the food poisoning discussion with an innocuous, comfortably vague version of his worst case, but I made the mistake of topping him with my story of an eighteen-year-old, living on his own for the first time.

“I was on my own for the first time, and I knew nothing about the proper ways to preserve meat.” I said. “No one effectively warned me that meat is basically poison when you leave it uncovered in a fridge for a couple days. The meat had little white spots on it, but I thought that the gallon of milk I had a shelf higher sprung a leak again. That happened about a week earlier, with a different gallon, and I just thought it happened again. I basically poisoned myself. The pain I felt from that bout of food poisoning was something I never experienced before or since. Not only did I question whether I was going to live through this, I kind of questioned if I really wanted to.”

That was it from my end, comfortably vague. I could’ve gone into detail, embarrassingly specific detail, but I didn’t want to go down that road. I didn’t want to go down that road, because that’s not what you do when you’re talking to a fella, over beers, at a baseball game, during an otherwise beautiful Friday evening.

Roy saw my move, and he decided to checkmate me with his “You think you had it bad …?” plank. My guess is Roy thought that the best way to top a relatively entertaining story that remained comfortably vague was to go into detail. The humor, Roy must’ve thought, is in the details. Roy must’ve thought that my story was the culinary equivalent of a potato with a side of broccoli, and to top mine, he brought the meat.

“Mine was coming out both ends, you know what I’m saying?” he began. I knew what he was saying, and while the image I had in my head was cringe-worthy, it wasn’t completely irreversible. I don’t know if Roy was feeling ultra-competitive in the war story arena, but he decided that he needed to put an exclamation point on his story by adding one final, irreversibly disturbing nugget, “You know that point where you have to change your underpants three times in a day …”

I’m all for my storytellers telling me about their epic fails, but when this grown man told the tale of his inability to make it to a facility on time, I wasn’t sure how I could help him restore his credibility. To my mind, unless you’re medically declared incapable of doing so, failure to make it to the facility on time might be the most humiliating and embarrassing moment in a grown adult’s life. The one proviso is that if it happens, it happens behind a closed, locked door, and with some diligent effort devoted to the cause, we can destroy any and all evidence until no one will ever find out that our streak of not soiling ourselves since that embarrassing moment in second grade is now over. The only thing that can make that ultimately embarrassing and humiliating moment in life the second most humiliating moment in life is by going public with it.  

My new rule: if we’re having such a discussion, and we’re both grown adult males, at a BASEBALL GAME, keep it vague. I know that goes against everything I wrote earlier, and it goes against my personal constitution to say that, but everything is relative and situational. When we’re sitting at a baseball game, I don’t want to hear excruciating details about an emotional moment from your life that leaves tears rimming your eyes, and I don’t want to picture you, my adult, male friend, with dirty underpants around your ankles, and a look of shame and disgust on your face, as you bear witness to the consequences of your inability to make it to the facility on time. 

As a storyteller who values “The Funny” so much that I don’t care who gets hurt, as long as it’s me, I understand that it’s all about our vulnerabilities, and I understand that comedy is confessional, but we’re smashing some valuable signposts that warn us against going further. We do this, because our standup comedians, podcasters, and our Facebook friends are now saying some of the most awful, embarrassing and incriminating things about themselves. We laugh at/with these boundary smashing and taboo tweaking comedians, because they’re brand of funny feels so new that it feels transcendent, and  we all want to be the guy who tops the other guy and breaks on through to the other side of conventional storytelling and conventional comedy. Before we break through, though, I think we should all ask ourselves what we will look like on the other side? I might be an endangered species now for overthinking such matters, but Roy, Tommy, and my dad taught me that garnering intrigue, eliciting sympathy, and getting the laugh isn’t a gumbo that means so much to me that I’m going reveal an ultimate humiliation that contains irreversible imagery around my ankles. They’ve taught me that there’s nothing wrong with keeping it comfortably vague.

Youth is Wasted on the Young

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“Youth is wasted on the young,” a famous old person, who is now dead, once said. If they have the opportunity to see us now, I wonder if they say, “Life is wasted on the living.”

We can do just about anything and everything we want, but we don’t because everything is “SO BORING!” When we’re younger, we have the health and energy to do more, but we don’t because there is this “Is that all There Is?” mentality to doing extraordinary things. There are some exciting people to meet, places to go, and things to encounter, but most of what we experience in life could be characterized as mundane, trivial and meaningless to those with experience in such characterizations. To those who no longer have the energy of youth or the health necessary to do a number of things, they view youth as wasted on the young.  

Remember brooding in the corner, because that comically weak chin strap on your birthday hat snapped, while everyone else was running around laughing, screaming with joy, and just having a whale of a good time. Wouldn’t you love to redo that day and all of the other fun and frivolity that you missed because you thought life was “SO BORING!”   

I used to look forward to birthdays. I used to count the days until a bunch of people screamed “Happy Birthday!” to me with hats on, kazoos in their mouths, and party favors all around. I remember Batman-themed birthday parties, Scooby Doo parties, and a Shazaam! birthday party. My seventh birthday stands out, because I played my best friend, and biggest rival, in the most popular football video game of the era, and I beat him! It was such a great birthday party that it set a precedent that no future birthday could match. Every birthday after that “Sucked!” because they were “SO BORING!” Not even the “Welcome to the roads!” 16th birthday, the “Happy Bigenoughtobarday!” 21st, the dirty thirty, or the still-fun@40 birthday party could match that seventh birthday party. At some point, we all stop looking forward to birthdays, and we start to look back. No one knows what specific age this starts happening, but we lose our jubilant “This is my day!” smiles as our odometer clicks by.

The older I get, the colder I get. I’m freezing all the time now.

The older I get, the bolder I get. I used to pretend to love things they told me to love, “You don’t love The Lone Ranger?” they asked. I pretended I did, because I was a kid, and a boy, and they expected every boy to love their brand new, The Lone Ranger toys. Now that I’m old and bold, I want to go back in time and tell everyone I knew that I never loved The Lone Ranger. I was told to love it, and I was taught to like it, because every good boy does. I tried to like his horse Silver and his buddy Tonto, but everything they did was “SO BORING!” to me. I pretended to love Cheech and Chong later, because everyone expected me to love their risque, naughty brand of humor. Now that I’m old and bold, I can finally say they only had one joke that they did over and over in as many ways as they could think up, but it was one joke, and I never considered that joke that funny. Everyone expected me to love Animal House when I was in college, because laughing at that movie is what college-aged students do. Now that I’m older and bolder, I no longer have to pretend to like the guitar-smashing, the zit-popping mashed potato joke, or the uncomfortable in the blues bar joke that I’m expected to remember so fondly that I still get a tear of laughter whenever I think of it. I didn’t dare say any of that before, because everyone expected me to coat my love all over of it. I pretended that I did, because I wanted to fit in.   

One of the few joys of getting old is that we no longer have to play pretend. We don’t have to say we love things to fit in, to spare someone’s feelings, and we no longer feel that need to constantly prove ourselves. I no longer feel the need to enter into that crucial, seminal argument on the issue of the day, because I want everyone to know how well informed I am. I no longer consider it my mission in life to change minds. I now see it as pointless. “You think you’re going to change her mind today at lunch?” I ask. “You’re going to battle against thirty-five years of conditioning. She’s been dying to prove her bona fides on this issue, and so have you. You’re not going to get anywhere if you sincerely hope to change her mind.” 

They no longer expect us to love inconsequential matters now. They expect us to grumble about food portions, the cost of living, how much better things were in “my day”, and something about kids getting off my lawn. 

I never thought I’d reach an age when I cherished life, but I never expected to be this old either. I didn’t expect to die young of course, but I didn’t expect I’d get this old either. I never thought I’d actually be grateful for decent health, because I thought that’s what old people did. I never thought I’d be happy to be alive, and greet each morning with a new-day smile. I never thought I’d try to make today better than yesterday, but I never expected to be this old either. “Youth is wasted on the young,” because they have the energy to live life and love it, they just don’t. 

We watch clocks when we’re young, because we can’t wait to get out of one place to get to another. We watch clocks to escape the great “youth-thief” we call school, and then we watch clocks until it’s time to get off work. When we finally get out of those places, we go to other places with the same faces, because everything is overrated, overhyped, and eventually, “SO BORING!” Do clocks move slower in youth and faster in our senior years? I don’t know, but I was never happier in life than I was when complaining about it. 

I remember when an old person told me that “We should be grateful for our health.” I was polite, and I said something like, “We do take good health for granted,” but I didn’t mean it. I thought good health was “SO BORING!” Now that my body is no longer the incredible, recuperative machine it once was, I appreciate moments of good health. 

Some moronic celebrity was going on and on about a late-in-life career choice they made, and I didn’t hear most of what they said. The late-in-life characterization stuck with me though, so I looked the idiot up and learned we were the same age? I’m late-age now? I’m over-the-hill? What’s the hill? What age is the crest of that hill? My boss confessed, “My better years are behind me now, I know that.” He was 40 at the time. If my better years are behind me, why do I enjoy life now more than I ever did? Why didn’t I enjoy my better years more? You don’t. We don’t. No one does. It’s natural, human nature, and the way of life. “Youth is wasted on the young.” You can mourn the lost years, regret that you didn’t do more, or you can try to live the best life you can live now to try to make up for it. 

“Life is what you make it,” an old stranger once told me. 

“Uh huh! Now, could you move aside!” I wanted to say. “I’m not going to appreciate my life or my good health, stranded outside Walgreens like this, where the weather is suboptimal. I can’t make it better, until my dad finally picks me up, and he’s already forty-five minutes late!” When I finally get to the place where I’m supposed to be I’m probably going to say, “This is SO BORING.”

The “Pull the Plug!” People

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“But I don’t want to live longer!” we say when we find out they’re talking about aggressive, life-prolonging treatment. “I want to die with dignity!”

Most of the conversations we have on this weighty topic do not involve doctor, patient confidentiality, in doctors’ offices or emergency rooms. Most of them occur in bars and employee cafeterias, where we say, “I hope I never have to face such a situation, but if I do, I don’t want machines keeping me alive. I’ll choose dying with dignity.” The conversation participants are often thirty-to-forty somethings who hopefully won’t face such scenarios for forty-to-fifty years.

“What we’re talking about is being hooked up to machines and/or computers, and that’s scary.” Of course it is. If it’s not scary, then the patient is either the bravest person we can imagine or someone who doesn’t understand the question. Some take it to terrifying heights in hypotheticals, which leads me to believe they’ve probably seen too many worst-case scenarios, in the movies. They think if we fall prey to our desire to mess with nature, or God’s plan, by living a few more months or year, they’re going to wake in a hospital to see a half machine, half human cyborg staring back at them in a mirror.

“I don’t care, I don’t want any tubes sticking in me, and I don’t want wires sticking out of me,” they say, “I ain’t going out like that. I want to die with dignity.”  

Talk is cheap of course, and I think most of us will choose life, depending on the bullet points of the detailed explanation we face, but there are the “I don’t care. I ain’t going out like that” types who become combative when someone approaches them with a mask, an intravenous needle, or an intubation tube. 

We’ve all heard real-life scenarios involving gruesome illnesses, and we sympathize with the decisions that have to be made, but I just don’t understand the hypothetical and categorical denials of advanced care. I think it boils down to tradition, as we’ve all heard the horror stories our loved ones envision when it comes to technological advancements, and their repetition influences our answers. It makes no sense to them that machines and computers can prolong life. “Anytime you put something in, something else falls out,” and “For every action there is a reaction,” they say to make note of the unnatural, irrational, and in some ways immoral technological extension of life. They believe that messing around with nature, or God’s design, will produce unforeseen consequences.

“When it’s my time, it’s my time, and I’ll be ok with that,” they say, and we all smile and gain greater respect for them saying that.

“Ok,” I want to say, “but what if there is a chance that you could live a quality life following a procedure. Will that definition of a quality life be somewhat reduced, likely, but what if it could still be a quality life?”  

Most of the people I know, through these conversations, categorically reject any form of hypothetical talk of some diminishment, and they drop that “Dying with dignity!” line. It might just be the people I know, or it might be human nature, but most of us default to cynicism when we make leaps to worst-case scenarios when it comes to the technological advances that other faceless entities developed. It’s that term faceless entities that we latch onto, as we develop fears that these technological advancements have occurred with little to no human involvement. (I think we can thank/blame the repetitive messaging from sci-fi movies for that.)

I heard a story about a person who was so adamant that they let her die that “she became fighting mad” when the talk of prolonging her life occurred. In her defense, the prognosis was that “they” figured they might only be able to prolong her life six months to a year, with treatment. Those last two words stoked her ire. “What does with treatment mean?” she asked, but she stopped them in the midst of their explanation. She didn’t want to know. Talk is cheap, as they say, but she didn’t want to hear such talk. “I don’t fear death, or being forgotten. I want go out gracefully.”

Hearing what she went through, and her fighting stance, this is my proclamation: “If I’m lying there on my death bed, with nothing but machines keeping me alive, don’t pull the plug, resuscitate as many times as you have to, and keep me alive no matter what. I don’t care if I’m a vegetable who can only communicate through a series of beeps, like that Stephen Hawking guy. I love life, and I don’t want it to end. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.” 

That’s funny, right? Is it funny because no one says that, even at lunch in employee cafeterias and afterwork, barroom hypotheticals. Everyone I talked to says pull the plug, turn it off, and do not resuscitate. They don’t even need a moment to think about it. It’s almost an instinctive response now. No one says I want to live as long as I can, no matter what. Most people choose death with dignity, because the opposite is the opposite that they don’t even want to discuss. Yet, if you talk to these people often enough, you’ll learn that dying with dignity seems more important to them than living with dignity. Some of the things they do, and we have to keep in mind that if they’re telling us about these things, what are they too ashamed to reveal. When you hear these things, you realize that they don’t mind doing things that make us think less of them in life, but when it comes to death, they choose dignity.

We’ve been spooked. Someone somewhere convinced us that medical procedures, technological advancements, and even a brief stay in hospitals (“I hate hospitals!”) is worse than the alternative. What’s the alternative? “I’ll tell you what the alternative is. It’s preferred!

“If I found out I have diabetes,” Bruce continued, after his award-winning preferred joke. “I’d rather die than go through all their treatments. Have you heard what the treatments are for diabetes? No thank you. I’m not going to monitor my blood sugar levels, take insulin and other oral drugs. They talk about having a healthy diet to combat your symptoms, and that sounds all great and all when you’re sitting in a doctor’s office, until you learn what a healthy diet means. If you want me to maintain a proscribed weight, I have a warning for you. I won’t. I’ll tell you that I will, and I’ll mean it in the moment when I’m sitting in a hospital gown with my ass exposed, but once I put my denim back on, I’m going to eat whatever the hell I want. You might think it doesn’t take much to ascribe to a healthy diet, until they start in on that list. At some point, a healthy diet comes into conflict with what the quality of life. They also talk about engaging in regular physical activity. Regular physical activity sounds as doable as a healthy diet when you’re all scared in a doctor’s office, and we’ll agree to exercise more … for about a week. Then we’ll fall back into our usual routine when we’re feeling all healthy again.” After a couple months, or however long it takes for our refusal to follow their edicts to catch up to us, they’ll eventually put me on kidney dialysis. Do you know what that is? It’s basically a machine that they hook you up to to take all your blood out of your body, clean it, filter it, and all that crap, until it’s time to put it back in us. Can you really picture me doing that, seriously? The final straw will take place when they tell us to at least monitor my sugar intake. The message, therein, will be to try to avoid sugar and carbohydrates as much we can. I’ll be frank with you, I’d rather die. I’d rather die than have anyone see me say no to a Snicker’s bar.”  

Anytime I think I exaggerate the glamorization of death some fixate on, I hear stories that mirror Bruce’s “I’d rather die than go through all that.” I also hear stories about people purchasing caskets, tombstones, and plots when they’re in their thirties! “I want a casket in a quiet, shaded area, because I was forced to live by a railroad that was always so noisy.” We dream about our funeral, picturing our people crying and all that, and we want them to say something like, “She denied treatment, because she didn’t want to go out like that. That’s the way she wanted it, and we respected her wishes in the end.” We might get that conversation, but it might also get interrupted when the home team scores a touchdown on the television in the reception area. That’s fine, but it’s so important to us that our friends and family remember that we ‘died with dignity’ that we creatively expand that line. We don’t want the ‘how she died’ to earmark us throughout history. We don’t want others to say, “Did you see her at the end? It was so sad. She was so vibrant and fun for most of her life, but in the end, she was a vegetable.” We don’t want to see that look of disgust, because we know that look, we’ve given that look to others. We all hope that we’re never in these situations, where doctors force our loved ones to make decisions, and if we are, we want them to know we’d rather die. 

Most of us will never face such a situation, with our lives or the lives of immediate family members for whom we must make such decisions, but those who see it on a regular basis, choose death. A recent study found that 88.3 percent of doctors who regularly pursue aggressive, life-prolonging treatment for patients facing the same prognosis, said that they would choose “no code” or do-not-resuscitate (DNRs) orders for themselves. They see what their patients go through, and they prefer death.

 

Let’s not gloss over this. Those who know far more than we do about these situations choose a dignified death. We can talk about situational hypotheticals all we want, and the intrinsic value of life over death, but those who see the suffering of patients on a daily basis, who know what family and loved ones go through watching their loved one die, would prefer to forego pursuing aggressive, life-prolonging treatment. Is that shocking? I think it is, but I’ve only had one experience with a loved one in such a situation, and the decision we made was basically a forgone conclusion by the time we made it. Needless to say, my answer is an uninformed one, but those I spoke with in cafeterias and bars were just as uninformed as I was, and they chose death. 

The most common response for “no code” and DNR decisions is the quality of life, followed by medical prognosis, personal beliefs, autonomy and avoiding becoming a burden. The latter, we can only guess, is largely financial, but there is also the physical burden of counting on your loved ones to provide physical assistance. Most people don’t care for all that, they prefer death. 

Contrary to much speculation, we won’t get to come back and see how our decisions affected our loved ones. Once we’re gone, we’re gone. Life is over and there ain’t no coming back. Who cares what they say or think, I say, live long and prosper. If there is an afterlife, and we end up looking up, down, or around at the aftermath of our decision, my bet is that we’ll wish that we wrung every droplet of water out of the sponge before we went into the great unknown? I don’t know what I’m talking about here anymore than you do, but if that fateful day ever arrives, and I’m forced to make that decision, I think I’ll choose life.