"What is the meaning of life?"

“What is the meaning of life?” I haven’t thought much, or thought very often, about this question. Douglas Adams answered it as well as anyone when he had a super-computer in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy answer “42” – an answer that is as meaningful as that of many philosophers who have filled fat volumes with words that usually evade a simple answer. I don’t think there is a simple answer even to a more specific question, “What is the meaning of my life?”  I’ve tried to answer this question in my memoirs and I’ve provided hints about my answer in a few of the posts on this blog. Here are some pertinent thoughts.

Chance plays an important part in everyone's life, most certainly in mine. At about 9 am on Sunday September 25, 1955 as I was heading for my golf club I saw two young women hitch hikers ahead of me. In those days I picked up hitch hikers, applying a ‘what goes around comes around’ approach: I’d hitch hiked in Britain and Europe and owed it to other hitch hikers to offer them lifts. Within minutes of picking up these two I knew I wanted to see more of one of them than was possible in the 10 minutes before I’d be dropping them (they were on the wrong road for their intended destination).  That’s when I made the life-changing decision to scrap my golf that day and to spend the day showing them some of the lovely country in my favourite corner of South Australia. Our meeting was as random as any event in life can be. The two girls were on the wrong road, and running an hour later than they'd intended. I'd never used that road before to get to my golf club. I was on it only because I'd delivered a baby the night before in a cottage hospital on the far periphery of our practice catchment area, went back first thing in the morning to make sure mother and baby were OK. What happened afterwards wasn’t random: I made, we both made, things happen the way we wanted them to happen. Our one-day meeting led to a prolific, increasingly affectionate correspondence. Before long I was confident that our letters would bring us back together and soon after that we would be marrying. 

Chance again: In December 1955, early in a long, hot summer, I was senior registrar (= chief resident) in the infectious diseases hospital in Adelaide during the last-ever epidemic of paralytic polio. It was a particularly nasty epidemic. The polio virus was knocking out the nerve-muscle junctions for breathing and swallowing, a strategic viral assault that often had a fatal outcome.  Record numbers of young adults in my age group were in ‘iron lungs’ – artificial respirators – and more than half of them were dying. I did what I had to do, while applying with super diligence all the procedures of universal precautions to protect myself against polio. I didn’t get polio, but it was not because of those universal precautions, which we now know do not protect against infection with the polio virus, but by chance alone.  Chance, not 'universal precautions,' spared me from paralytic poliomyelitis, and perhaps premature death. 

I know more now than I did in 1955 about the mathematics of epidemics, as well as about the modes of transmission of infectious organisms. We know now, but didn't know in 1955, that the polio virus is transmitted mainly, perhaps exclusively, by the fecal-oral route. The same laws of chance govern all biological events and processes, including the chance events of evolutionary biology, which led to the evolution of humans. With variations set by quantum theory the laws of chance apply to the stars and planets of the universe, and what happens inside atoms. The laws of chance placed our earth in an orbit that allows H2O to exist in liquid form, an essential prerequisite for life as we know it. The laws of chance apply also to evolutionary biology, enabling humans to evolve to the status and condition we see all around us, with all the joys and sorrows attendant on this status and condition. (As of the latter half of 2015, I think the status of Homo sapiens is equivocal, and the condition is precarious. There is a finite albeit small probability that Homo sapiens will soon join the vast majority of other species that have existed since life as we know it became possible, and will become extinct. That too will be determined at least partly by chance.) But in this post I’ll stay away from speculating about that possible outcome.

My life acquired meaning and purpose after I met and fell in love with Janet Wendelken, a.k.a. Wendy. Until then, I’d existed and enjoyed most of my experiences but my life was aimless. I mostly just let things happen. After September 25, 1955 I knew, if in a rather inchoate way, what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to fulfill the potential of my medical education. I wanted to help make the world a better place. These aspirations merged and mingled when I gave up treating sick people one at a time and started my training in public health sciences. I aimed to do my best to elevate the health of the whole population by applying the full spectrum of my knowledge and skills to this end.  Wendy’s moral compass, and her conspicuous altruism, became part of my persona too.

 In the winter of 1958 when we'd been married less than two years I worked on the front line of the Asian Influenza pandemic which killed 2-3 million people worldwide, and several in my practice, including a young ambulance driver with whom I sometimes played golf, a nurse in the hospital where I did most of my obstetrics, and several other young people I knew who were about my age and Wendy’s. Soon after the pandemic subsided I fell dangerously ill with virus pneumonia. Both I and the young specialist physician treating me thought I was going to die. During my rather long convalescence I had time to think about the future I almost didn’t have. I talked it over with Wendy, and decided to leave the group practice where I was very happy and by all accounts, was doing a competent job. For a year we lived on my savings while I retrained in public health sciences.  I got a traveling fellowship with a stipend intended for a single man without dependents, and spent a year in the Medical Research Council Social Medicine Research Unit in London. By the end of that year I was a well-trained epidemiologist. The combination of rich clinical experience in general practice and very good training in epidemiology gave me a profile much in demand – though ironically, not in Australia where there was still massive indifference to anyone with this skill set. That's how we ended up in Canada, but that's another story for another time.

What I understand of evolutionary biology, mathematics, statistics, quantum physics, astronomy, philosophy, and history, among other aspects of knowledge, leads me to conclude that chance has had an important role in the human condition, as well as in my own life. Chance determined the position of planet earth in the solar system, the origin and evolution of life and of humans, and to a large extent, the course of human history.  If Gavril Princip’s pistol had misfired, or if he had arrived 10 minutes later at his chosen position to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand, the Great War of 1914-1918 probably would not have happened.  On a larger, cosmic scale, I am sure there is ‘life’ elsewhere in the cosmos, although whether it is life as we understand it or something beyond our comprehension, is unknowable. There may be ‘living’ crystalline species, or ‘living’ forms of gases or vapors. By ‘life’ and ‘living’ I mean something that has the ability to grow, to reproduce, to be born and to die. Crystals have these qualities and so do free-flowing gases and vapors.  So do colonies of ants, termites and bees.  I embrace James Lovelock’s concept of Gaia as a living entity. If I have faith and belief, it is belief that Gaia is a living entity and faith in Gaia’s capacity to withstand the appalling harms inflicted by predatory and aggressive humans over the course of history. Our current concept of the early history of planet earth is that cyanobacteria proliferated in an atmosphere of hydrogen cyanide and methane, transformed the atmosphere by producing oxygen as a metabolic product, and although the oxygen was lethal to cyanobacteria, oxygen enabled life as we know it to come into existence. Humans and machines powered by carbon-based fuels are transforming the global environment again, rather rapidly rendering this environment hostile to many living creatures – plants, animals, and ourselves – so that a very real possibility exists that we too might soon become extinct. If so, we will be as much responsible for our own extinction as cyanobacteria were for theirs.

All this, all the evidence, leads me to conclude that there's not much more, if anything, I can do to shape my own destiny, let alone anyone else's. However, along the way towards shaping my destiny and my family's, I've had a wonderful, exciting, eventful life. Fun-filled too. Nobody could ask for more, or better.