Last night we watched End of the Spear a movie that was part based-on-a-true-story, part prosetylization. I saw the trailer for it a month or so ago and thought it looked really cool… and then I saw it featured at Hobby Lobby and my first thought was “Oh great, another movie that will have forced acting and a poorly veiled religious agenda.” The movie, while marginally interesting, was exactly as I expected — almost painful at times. (Especially the analogies to cliched Christian epithets ["Waegongi has a son", "Walk waegongi's trail"])
However *AFTER* the movie, during the beginning of the credits, they showed the real people that were portrayed by actors during the movie (Micayune and Steve), as they are living today. There’s apparently a documentary being released in the near future about Micayune, Steve, and the other missionaries down in Ecuador and their life now. It looks *REALLY* interesting and I would *REALLY* like to see it. (Some highlights: Micayune goes to the supermarket, sees a moving sidewalk at an airport, sees Steve pay for groceries with a credit card. Simple things that are profound to third-world nations.)

But watching the primitive Waogani (I apologize if that is incorrect) made me think of a few things. Their lives were plagued by constant wars within their culture — the two tribes were constantly warring on each other, spearing one another, over and over. No one ever grew old enough to have grandchildren. Most of the Waogani would not expect to live into their middle ages.

This all seems really savage and primitive, but aren’t we, in our civilized world, still plagued with similar uncertainties? Melissa told me yesterday about a women who became snowbound in her car with her husband and two children (7 mos, 4 yrs). The husband went off on his own and has not been recovered yet, but she was able to keep the kids alive by breastfeeding them. Today I heard about the wife of someone who used to work here at the university; She had an aneurysm and died on the way to the hospital. Her 4 year old child was in the backseat and witnessed her death as her husband drove.

I’ve also been reading this book called “Chance Rules: an introduction to probability and statistics.” The title is pretty self-explanatory. Last night I read the chapter about death rates and risk assessment. They were comparing death by auto accident to death by plane crash — you are statistically much much more likely to DIE in an auto accident than you are in a plane crash. (Thousands of times more likely — it’s a really significant number) Yet people still would prefer to drive because they think it’s safer. I think it’s because they think they’re more in control of their own fate that way, so it seems less stressful. But really, the statistical deaths are more or less independent of the people involved. They are inevitable to happen.

It’s made me really aware of my own mortality, and being recently married, my family as well. There isn’t any sure fire way to ensure that my family will survive to be old, and that I will see my own grandchildren. It makes me think of sea turtles — they crawl onto shore, lay their eggs, and then crawl back out to sea. The turtlings (or whatever they’re called) hatch, and crawl out to sea — some of them make it but a lot of them get eaten by crabs, sea gulls, and other animals. In a way, all of us are sea turtles trying to make it out to our own old-ages, and some of us just randomly get picked off. That’s just how it happens. All you can really do is hope you aren’t a lucky winner, becoming another statistic.

Categories: Writing Pieces
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