MI

How do we let our lives get so out of control? We take on those extra commitments, justifying them one at a time for their recreational value or their ability to fatten our resumes, unknowingly eeking closer and closer to the edge of the precipice, until one day we fall. And when we fall, we fall hard.

Three months ago, one of my classmates had a heart attack. Three weeks after finishing her undergraduate degree, this woman, a single mother in her early thirties, had a heart attack. So now, as she writes me an email about how she's trying to keep her stress level down, she tells me about full-time graduate courses, part-time work, professional and student organizations, and parenting. Does she not see the ticking clock? Did the first myocardial infarction not catch her attention? (Would it have caught mine? Or yours?)

Why do we do this to ourselves?