Thirteen Lives

 I think for a lot of people, there's life before the pandemic, and life after the pandemic (and life during the pandemic). But usually people point to March 2020 when everything shut down as the natural dividing line between 2 types of lives. Before March 2020, I lived a life very much on the go, always looking for the next thing, reporting to work at least 5 days a week, very goal driven about making as much money as I possibly could, and life passed at a breakneck pace (or so it seems looking back on that lifestyle). I didn't focus on the world around me, as it was more about learning languages and playing dodgeball, almost in that oreder. I don't think MJ and I traveled to to as many places as we did neither, as I wasn't curious about it all, it was just noise. I had such tunnel vision that I missed out on one of the most compelling stories of 2018, the story of the Thai soccer team trapped in the caves. I did remember hearing brief updates about it interspersed with scores from the World Cup going on in Russia that year, but I may have just mixed it up with the Chilean miners from 2010, a completely different situation. To me Thailand was probably half a world away, with no connection to my world, and Thailand was not one of the languages I was interested in. That was also the summer of stocks taking off and my first summer of investing heavily in the market, so instead of international news I was trying to find the next Amazon, or next Microsoft, etc. 

My post-pandemic self is interested in learning about the things I missed pre-pandemic. I just watched the movie "Thirteen Lives" by Ron Howard starring Viggo Mortenson, Colin Ferrell, and Joel Egerton, and man Ron Howard does a great job at recruiting real life events and making us care about the characters. From Apollo 13 to Backdraft, I'm hooked by the real drama of these events, however accurate they are. There's some debate about how accurate some of the details are, and of course every movie is going to have some artistic license, but in general everything is true: a group of cave divers came to rescue the kids from an impossible situation where the floods had blocked off the entrance and divers had to swim hours just to get to the kids. They first had to find the kids (already 10 days in), then realized there was bad oxygen in the cave so they had a limited time to get them out, and of course impending storms would make the floods worse and make it even more impossible. I did NOT realize how close the kids were to not making it out alive, and it was kind of a miracle just to get any of them out at all, with a brilliant idea being born out of necessity to use anesthesia to conserve air and get them to not move and have the divers pull them out like cargo throught the caves. And somehow it worked, a medical device + escape story! Truly a made-for-TV event except it was real. And the cave collapsed on itself a few days later due to the rain and heavy flooding, so all the help from the rescue teams and the volunteers in the area keeping the water out of the caves really made a difference. Everyone involved was a credit to mankind. And I was just at work during the whole time, blissfully unaware of all the details and just only focusing on myself and my selfish circumstances, trying to make as much money as I could for myself. 

Thirteen Lives, for me at least, reminds me that there are more noble purposes in life than just going to work every day, and people who actually specialize in cave rescues (I'm sure there are all sorts of niche rescue workers like firefighters, volcano rescue teams, desert rescue teams, etc., but this was something I never heard of) and people risking their lives to help others. That team should have made international news and hailed as people of the year, but instead it probably went to some musician or politican or movie star because everyone loves popularity- just checked, in 2018 Time's Person of the Year was "The Guardians" of truth, so not bad, but in 2023 it was Taylor Swift, and I'd argue these rescue divers put a lot more on the line like their own safety than Taylor Swift ever has. (Just one man's opinion). The anesthesiologist/ rescue diver who checked the health of the 13 boys in the cavey, Richard "Harry" Harris, became lieutenant governor of South Australia, so I guess he did get a hero's welcome and credit went where it was due. Reminder for me to breathe the fresh air once in a while, read the news, get inspired by something, it's not always bad headlines and political news and the latest junk on social media, sometimes, once in a while, there are inspiring stories that make you feel good about life and want to make something out of one's life, more than just trying to make it through.