I never thought I'd make 18. I repeatedly sidestepped sudden death throughout my childhood, so much that I actually gave it thought and decided I'd better live as hard as I could before I died. This proved to be rather ill advised, but, hey, I was a kid. From wrecking motorcycles, swamping boats, and leaping out of trees on purpose, Alaska proved luck outweighs reason in my youth. In my later teens, driving a forklift off a dock, a car with no brakes off a cliff, and more boating tricks, the doubt I'd survive to majority was reinforced almost monthly.

I have maintained the good luck required to keep all my digits attached and limbs functional all my life, despite stepping out of the way of certain death at the last minute regularly. Then I had a heart attack a couple years ago, and again cheated death by chasing down the ambulance on foot when they drove right past my house, making it to an airport for life flight out of town because the airport here was flooded that night, and managing not to mess up the surgery when I woke up in the middle of it, yet was working 70 hours a week 1 week later.

One of these days I'll fall under a bus, eat a bullet, or something. Luck can't carry a guy forever.

I note that I never learn from being lucky, either. Well, that's not entirely true. I fell off a second story and bounced pretty hard ~10 years ago, and the next day I had a harness, so even lucky bounces can teach you something. However, it is the more painful experiences we are motivated not to repeat, and that is what I mean when I say the worse I have been treated the more I have learned, because there is no pain worse than pain you should have avoided by learning from past mistakes.

I am incapable of rectifying others' behaviours or views, and it has taken intolerable anguish to finally learn this definitively. I undertake to not be dependent on another's actions for my well-being, because I can chastise me or pay the price for ill-considered adventures I foolishly undertake, but wives and bosses not so easily when they volunteer me for them. Stoning others for their sins never cures wounds I bear as a result of those sins, so I don't seek to regardless of whether I am righteous enough to even consider it. Not only is it laughable for me to consider me some kind of moral authority, unless I can prevent the commission of crimes by doing so, stoning anyone else neither does me nor anyone any good.

I spend none of my limited attention on thoughts of revenge.

Better that I figure out how I got harmed and set boundaries that will keep it from ever happening again.