Own Your Life

In the past week two different, yet oddly similar, tragedies took the lives of many people. In both instances almost the same number of lives were lost: about 150 in Seoul, Korea were crushed during a stampede at a Halloween festival and approximately 135 in India drowned or were otherwise mortally injured in a footbridge collapse. In both instances, the "authorities" on the scene are very busy trying to find who is responsible so they can punish them with lawsuits or possibly prison, even though it's clearly evident the dead people themselves made decisions that sealed their fate.

In the Halloween stampede last Saturday, thousands of people filled the tiny streets and cramped alleys of a popular neighborhood full of pubs, clubs and music venues, pushing and shoving to escape the crowds. Naturally, many people fell to the ground and were trod  upon by those who hadn't fallen down, and eventually were crushed to death by the sheer weight of them.

In the Indian disaster, the 143-year-old Morbi footbridge in the western state of Gujarat had recently reopened after months of renovations. At least 500 people were on it at the time, even though it was deemed safe for only 100 to 150 people. Since there is a fee to walk on the bridge, a popular tourist attraction, the owners and operators are being accused of greed for selling too many tickets. But hey -- would you have gotten on it just because you could have? One look at the flimsy, 754-foot long suspension bridge swaying high above a river would have dissuaded me from putting one toe on it, even if I was the only one there!

Lifelong smokers die of cancer and their families sue the cigarette makers. Fat people have fatal heart attacks and the fast-food industry is blamed. Speeding drivers crash and the auto manufacturer is seen as the culprit. People die in hurricanes after being warned for days to leave the area and the governor of the state is the bad guy. Deranged killers go on shooting sprees and the gun manufacturers are vilified. Voters install a bumbling old man and a nitwit as President and VP and then wonder why the country is a mess. (And Hillary Clinton still truly believes she lost the 2016 election because Trump somehow "stole" it from her, not because the people of American rejected her, but that's another post.)

Face it: You are the driver of your decisions, nobody else. Take a look in the mirror and you'll see who's responsible for your crummy life, if it is crummy, or your good fortune, if it is good. Instead of seeking a scapegoat for your life's misfortunes, as Joan Rivers would say, "Oh grow up!"