March

Just tallied it up… 21 good incidents in March and 15 bad ones. That’s an active month, but not an especially good one. Usually the good incidents are much better in a month than the bad ones are bad, but this time they’re about equal. Not one of my favorite months.

But the good news is: that’s about as bad as it gets. I think I only had one month in the 8.5 years I’ve been doing this where the bad literally outweighed the good. And to repeat, I’m not unnaturally optimistic, I just think it’s a natural human phenomenon to dwell too much on the bad. There has been real statistical value in unmasking this as mostly an illusion. It was prompted, you may recall, by Aristotle’s statement in the Rhetoric that went something like this: “old people are all bitter, since most things in life turn out worse than we expect.” Aristotle’s noir period, perhaps? That was such a devastating statement that I thought it over for years, and immediately upon moving to Egypt I decided to test the claim month by month.

And I do think Aristotle is largely wrong here. Granted, some people get dealt a truly rotten hand whether through birth or through horrible chance incidents. I don’t want to downplay human tragedy, I just want to point out that it’s probably not quite as widespread as the naturally somewhat morbid human temperament might lead us to fear.

And admittedly, all it would take is one incredibly horrible month to ruin the whole story– an air conditioner falls onto the sidewalk in Cairo this evening and kills me, or whatever. These things do happen. But if you can avoid the dice of the premature Angel of Death, and avoid being on the receiving end of any truly horrible crimes, then things are generally quite a bit better than the noir Aristotle suggests.