On Death and Driving

I dislike driving.  Each time I drive, there's some very small chance of death beyond my control.  I
minimize my time spent in vehicles, partially to minimize this chance.  Across all activities in the
modern world, there's some small chance of death: eating mass-produced food could expose me to prion
disease a decade later fatal, and my palms always sweat when I ride in an aeroplane knowing well how
it falling out of the sky would almost certainly kill me.  However, it's a mistake to attribute such
things to modernity only.  Surely I know things to be better than they were in seen and unseen ways.

I was entering the interstate, approximately four hours after the day's start this morning, behind a
long transport truck.  The vehicle was of course driving slowly through the on-ramp and I was paying
attention to the coming traffic in my rear-view mirror; the traffic was sparse, but a few other long
trucks switched lanes to allow us on the road, with that last switching a little late for my liking.
I stayed behind the vehicle until we began reaching full speed and then I too switched lanes to pass
it.  Nothing went wrong, but I was haunted unusually by the thoughts of what could've happened to me
had I made only slightly different choices.  Had I switched lanes to reach full speed prematurely, I
would've been struck by the oncoming truck which had instead passed me; there was a narrow bridge in
this section of the Interstate, so there would've been no possibility of avoiding my vehicle, nor of
it getting knocked out of the way.  I almost certainly would've been crushed and killed instantly by
a slight change of strategy.  I thought about the many conversations that could've been left hanging
by this; regular bills would continue to be taken until my checking account with a credit union were
exhausted, leading to the dissolution of my Gopher hole and website, and that would've been the end.

It once again occurred to me that I should make plans for my death, perhaps, and yet I never like to
so much as consider it; before I flew in an aeroplane for the first time, I genuinely considered it,
but making such plans almost seems to be willing their necessity into becoming.  Ultimately, I can't
see meaning in such planning; without more progress and solidified works, these writings matter not.
I suppose this to be akin to a man arranging his own funeral; such things could never matter at all.
I've been much more social these past few years, and it's interesting how uncommon death is all over
the world: I daily communicate with men, in good and bad locations, yet very little ever goes wrong.

Fear of death is fear of the inevitable and thus neurotic.  I fear not death, but unfinished work, a
life wasted.  Regardless, I suppose it's amusingly unlikely for anything sans time to finish me off.