survival of the fittest?

i was watching grey’s anatomy earlier today (i’ll admit it, I love that show) and in the episode I was watching, one of the intern’s father gets cancer and also has a leaking aorta and needed major surgery in order to live. For some reason this really got me thinking about life and I guess about death. Human beings are so…dispensable. We think that we are so fucking great because we are man; we’re invincible, the top of the chain, we are great because we control (well we think we do) everything. But if you take a step back and think about it do we actually control anything? I mean, our own bodies can decide to kill us. It’s bizarre one minute you’re healthy as a horse and the next you find out that a tumor is eating away at your brain. What can you control then? What can you do when you’re body turns against you, the one thing you think you have the most control over, takes your life in a direction that you don’t want to go.

I honestly don’t think people today really appreciate how lucky they are to be alive, really. Many of us will go through life virtually unharmed, sure they will have their scars and bruises just like everyone else, but really they get by ok. they’re the ones for which everyone comes easily, everything comes naturally and they never really have to go through anything that truly makes them appreciate being alive. They are man, invincible. But are you? Are we? Are we invincible because we are man and we have ultimate control? I honestly don’t think so; I don’t think that “man” controls shit. Can we control terminal cancer? What about aids or natural disasters? People need to take a step back and really reflect on their lives and what they can control and what they can’t. not enough people today truly appreciate the lives they have been given, how lucky they are. They are millions who are suffering far worse than many can even conceive and lots of these millions don’t get the chance to be able to beat it, to be able to survive. Some will say that it’s survival of the fittest and that those that are meant to live will survive and those who aren’t won’t. it’s nature’s “order” and it’s Darwinism and it’s bullshit. It’s not about survival of the fittest, it’s about luck and opportunity and chance.

I just can’t believe that people born with illnesses or born into horrible living conditions who die, die because of survival of the fittest. I’m not by any means “fit” in life right now and I’m surviving. Why? Life is so dispensable, it can be taken away in the blink of an eye, is that because of an order set by nature long ago, or it is because of fate? Of life working out the way it has to not because it wants to get rid of the weak but because it wants to prove to people that they are not invincible?