I am approaching my mid-seventies. Things are being planned about which I won’t learn the outcomes. Occasionally, but on increasing occasions, I realize my time is finite.

Here are a few examples.

Let’s start with a long horizon. Some scientists are beginning to predict the end of the earth. The molten core is cooling at a rate far faster than previously expected.

We might only have half of the previously thought billion years or so. Phew! When I look back at the previous 100 million years, I have no imagination free enough to know how we might dodge that bullet.  I’ll leave that one to my future ancestors.

Things are going off into space, in earth’s orbit, a million kilometres away. It’s a type of telescope, but not in the traditional sense. It looks at various wavelengths of light to learn about our past and perhaps of our future. I expect the data and interpretations to flow earthward after my passing.

Medical research is ramping up to do amazing things. One of the more interesting ones is something I’ll call DNA Treatment. It can work in two ways. First, medication is designed to match your DNA. I read recently that a specific drug had terrific results, but a few people were mysteriously dying. To shorten this research story, researchers found that the dead patients all had an abnormal part of their DNA.  With this information, they altered the medication, and the deaths were reduced as expected.

The second aspect of DNA is the actual manipulation of those strands. This is still too unreal to grasp mentally, but I hear and read about research at the very beginning levels that could prove life-changing for many individuals.

Research that was happening pre-pandemic was looking at various viruses. Progress was slow as it took a long time to identify patients who were unfortunate enough to catch the virus, sometimes several years. With our current global virus, more than enough patients were available within days.

So one of many reasons that progress was made to develop a vaccine so quickly is that much waiting time was saved. Pharmaceutical labs were already well on the way and pivoted to focus on Covid-19. (I had hoped to get through this pandemic without writing the word ‘pivoted,’ but it just seemed to fit in the gap of my limited vocabulary.)

Will wonders never cease? I hope not.

They give me hope, optimism, joy, confidence and all those many words that therapists encourage others to cloak themselves in as a better alternative to negativity and pessimism.

Please give this a bit of a think. What thoughts bring you the positivities of life? And while we are at it, what are there some negativities that keep cycling around for you? What can you do to have more of the former and less of the latter?

I’m curious about your thoughts. Please leave your comment below.

The picture this week is of an operatorless sail drone. It collects data, at sea, from some of the most challenging waters. It recently took photos and data from inside the eye of a hurricane. Will wonders never cease!

https://www.saildrone.com/

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