Add probably, feel better
Nothing will kill you (except for one thing)
A therapist once reassured me with this declaration: “It won’t kill you.” I offered a pedantic correction: “It probably won’t kill me.”
And I felt a lot better.
“It won’t kill you” isn’t necessarily true. “It probably won't kill you” is almost always true.
Every second of every day, you can be pretty sure you’re going to make it to the next one. This is true for all the seconds you’re alive, except for that final one. Probability is on your side—and then it isn't.
There’s a lot that can kill you. A grizzly bear, a perturbed neighbor, an out-of-control shopping cart. But that thing you’re worried about right now probably won’t kill you ( unless of course, it is the thing that does).
That last second of life sounds awful1, but it’s only one out of billions2. And yet that last second casts a shadow over all the rest. You fill your perfectly good Wednesdays with worry about things that statistically almost never happen. It's a peculiar form of narcissism to believe probability will make an exception for you.
It’s understandable. Our brains evolved to spot predators, not calculate odds. They're great at worst-case scenarios, terrible at math.
Here's what I’ve learned: Acknowledging the ‘probably’ doesn't make you more likely to die. It just makes you more honest about living. Nothing in this life is going to kill you except the one thing that eventually does. And until then, you're surviving at a perfect 100% success rate.
Good luck today.
Though we have few verified reports on the matter.
If life expectancy is 73 years, then the average human is alive for 2,303,704,800 seconds.