How many times have you almost died?

My wife asked me this question the other day. She wasn’t referring to me specifically, but people in general — the idea that we have so many unknown close calls that we never appreciate.

I mentioned an old shoulder injury, that happened while dirt biking in the mountains, many years ago. Young and stupid, fuelled by adrenaline and that youthful feeling of invincibility, I rode at an incredibly dangerous speed through knee-high grass that masked all kinds of unknown obstacles.

I hit something, I don’t know what. But one second I was on the bike, the next I was sliding across the ground before slamming into a small tree stump with my right shoulder. Had I been a few inches to the left, I would have walked away unscathed. A few inches to the right, and I would have snapped my neck.

In Vietnam, I caught dengue fever from a mosquito and, had it not been for my wife’s care and a handful of luck, it would have ended me. Another time, I was nearly crushed by a bus in London because I looked the wrong way before crossing the street. In Nicaragua, a riptide pulled me out to sea, and for a brief moment, before a rogue wave sent me back towards the shore, I accepted that my life was over.

Four times. In my entire life, there are four moments that, looking back, I know how close I was to the end.

But the question that my wife asked was much broader.

It wasn’t about those close calls that we know, it’s the others. How many times have you avoided some random encounter with fate: a car running a red light, a falling tree branch, a patch of ice on the highway, or a faulty something in the engine on a flight over the Atlantic?

This is an impossible question to answer. And to think about it too much can drive a person mad with paranoia.

Still, the idea that we keep going, despite how often we shouldn’t, is something so many of us take for granted.