I like living in a city where gun deaths are still rare. The fatality rate by firearms in Paris has gone up, but it stays relatively minimal. This doesn’t make the families of gun victims feel any better. Gun deaths still attract attention. The low gun-death count comes down to guns not widely available and not from any inherent love of life on the part of Parisians. I’m pretty sure if gun ownership was legal in Paris within a week the population would be cut in half. Knives are still the weapon of choice.
Where does one have to go these days to feel safe? A quick search revealed that Singapore has the lowest rate of death by firearms and Sweden, surprisingly, the highest. Chalk it up to long sunless winter days and the effects of listening to too much ABBA.
When I first moved to Paris it felt very safe. I slowly became aware of the change and that “Baltimore feeling” that I’d grown accustomed to when living there, started to come back. I’d describe this as the feeling that I could be the victim of an attack at any given moment, a brick crushing my skull, someone with a knife, it just takes imagination. Just like in Baltimore, it depends on the neighborhood. The feeling was something I picked up when I moved from Roland Park to Calvert St., south of North Ave.
I felt secure as a child. I had fears, the dark, getting lost; I recall once in Ocean City I was taken off a rollercoaster ride called The Wild Mouse because I was screaming. I had a feeling of menace when passing groups of angry teenagers sitting on stoops when walking with my parents downtown. But, in general, normal life never scared me.
Death is a reality, we all go some day. I read that in 2023 that the death count for the entire world was 63 million. There’s no escape, though a natural death is preferable to a violent one. But where to go to be out of harm’s way? Like many, I’ve sometimes dreamed of returning to the safety of my mother’s womb. How wonderful it must be, floating in nothingness, no pain, no needs, no conception of danger, no time, no need for judgment, pure existence. No child in the womb would need to formulate the experience, no child would even imagine such a thing necessary. Why create conceptual frameworks when you can just exist?
Imagine my surprise then when I learned that a woman’s womb isn’t a haven of safety, but rather the most dangerous place on earth. Worse than South Africa, Haiti, my hometown Baltimore, Chicago, even Sweden, worse than living in a tent on the sidewalk; worse than all the cities of the earth combined. Last year there were at least 73 million abortions, 10 million more than ex-utero deaths. I couldn’t believe it, so I checked the statistics. And indeed, those are the numbers. In 2023 there were, worldwide, 134 million births. What this means is that any baby has more than a one in three chance of not making it out of his mother.
As I see it, no one on earth has any reason to complain. Money, no money, good looks or not, talent or not, whatever raw deal you feel life handed you, why complain? If you make it out of your mother’s womb, you’ve hit the jackpot! It doesn’t mean you can expect a hero’s welcome, but at least you have the chance to exist. So, stop worrying! Just breath, laugh, cry, walk down the street, let the rain fall on your face, feel the sun, if you’re lucky, fall in love!