Thinking about our lives of chance
Angel Salas, 9, was killed in August when the car he was riding was rear-ended on the LIE by a driver who was allegedly drunk and speeding. Credit: Juliana Salas
A literature professor I studied with in college once remarked that if Thomas Hobbes were alive these days he'd probably drive to work in a tank.
Hobbes, a dour 17th-century English philosopher, is perhaps most famous for saying that life in the state of nature is nasty, brutish and short. Such was his dismal view of humans and the harshness of existence.
As a matter of survival, my professor argued, the modern-day Hobbes would do whatever he could to protect himself. Hence, the tank. Because Hobbes would not want to leave anything to chance.
This past week was a somber one for contemplating chance.
An indictment from a Suffolk County grand jury reminded us of 9-year-old Angel Salas, who died from injuries he suffered when a man allegedly drunk and high and driving at 119 miles per hour on the Long Island Expressway rear-ended the car in which Angel was secure in his booster seat.
The television news brought us accounts of three college students in Virginia shot dead on a bus by another student on their return from a trip to see a play in Washington.
Millions of Ukrainians went to bed, woke up, ate, played, worked, shopped and attended school, day after day, night after night, not knowing whether the next Russian strike would strike them.
Reports from Buffalo said the man who killed 10 people in a supermarket shooting would plead guilty to all charges, bringing back the shock, anger and bewilderment felt by a nation.
A sentencing hearing in Wisconsin revived memories of the horror felt by Christmas parade-goers who watched a man at the wheel of an SUV mow down marchers and spectators, killing six and injuring scores.
And you do find yourself thinking about the randomness of deciding to drive on a particular road at a particular time, of choosing a particular mode of transportation to get to a particular place, of living in a particular locale, of shopping at a particular store, of picking a particular public event to attend and a particular place from which to watch it.
And you can become paralyzed by chance, or ignore it. Most of us straddle the difference.
We understand, implicitly, that life is risk. And yet we live. We buy the ticket and take the ride, as gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson put it.
But many, if not most of us, also work to some degree to minimize the role chance plays in our lives. None of us owns a tank. But there are things we do. Some consciously, some not. Some relentlessly, some irregularly. Some dogmatically, some more laissez-faire.
We try to eat right. We try to exercise. We try to sleep well. We don't drink or smoke, or we do so in moderation, or we have periods where we abstain from things we know might harm our health. We wear seat belts. We pack a flotation device.
We don't go out at certain times to certain places, we don't accept certain dares, we don't pursue certain hobbies or travel to certain lands, we don't drive on a Saturday night through Blood Alley on the Southern State Parkway.
Most of us seek a balance between a careless disregard for consequences and the Hobbesian approach of armoring ourselves against chance. Because part of the joy of living lies in the risk. We embrace something more like the approach of Sophocles, the ancient Greek playwright who wrote, "Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day.”
Most times, what we do is enough. Sometimes, it isn't. Such is life. And on we go.
As we enter this week of giving thanks and thankful giving, we ought to think about chance, and be grateful that it favors us more than it does not.
Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
