I was first confronted with the concept of death at the age of...

I was first confronted with the concept of death at the age of around 5. Since then, I have faced it many more times, by my mid 20s 50% of my immediate family had left this world, cancer being a large contributor to what I had experienced. My father was diagnosed and passed away within a very short time with multiple myeloma, he had lost a massive amount of his body weight and looked like a skeleton covered in tumors. I later took an interest in immunotherapy as I started exploring investing in the stock market looking for emerging high risk high reward stocks. My mothers partner was recently diagnosed and is now fighting the same cancer, after speaking to them about these kinds of treatments they spoke to the doctor and is now involved in a clinical trial, the treatment seem to be very effective so far and the cancer is now in remission which is fantastic
Many families have suffered at the hands of this disease and I hope these treatments can bring some light into the tunnel for them

The second part of this post is a bit of a tangent and will likely come across as very insensitive, so please stop reading if you think you might be offended by this.

Being so familiar with life and death, I have found my mind pondering and thinking about things like the meaning of life and the whole bigger picture of thing. I have also had some very complicated experiences involving religion and turbulence within the family unit that cause me to try and make further sense of it all. I find myself trying to separate my emotion and personal experiences from it and look at the bigger picture, which is likely a self defense mechanism that I learned quite early in life in order to survive my personal ordeals (may also effect the way I invest and trade). Essentially I am thinking along the lines of the preservation of life, it starts with person experiences within our own families and our love for those that are close to us, then it expands out to our friends and their families and friends,then furthermore to the human race as a whole, then further again to life itself on planet earth (much like different timeframes on a chart). In the last couple of decades we have seen some startling changes in the world with extinction events and global warming that have really shaken up they way we think about our impact on our home. I think our attitude towards our own dominance and importance on this planet exacerbates a path that is leading us to a very catastrophic conclusion. We want more and more, bigger houses, better toys, faster internet, better gadgets, bigger flashing lights on taller buildings in larger cities and longer lives. We have conquered nature and destroy whatever becomes inconvenient, gets in our way, or poses any sort of risk to the way we want to live. We have science that allows us to extend our lives and have more children where naturally that wouldn't be possible. We have globalised the world allowing us to overpopulate regions beyond what is a sustainable level by shipping food and essential needs where they are needed which means it only becomes a problem when it is a global problem as apposed to a localized problem at different times in history that force a natural balance to occur. Now we have governments encouraging further population growth because they are concerned that there won't be enough young people to take care of them as they get old. Being a chart enthusiast I had a look at this chart and I find it quite terrifying!

The chart predicts a peak and then a decline which I struggle to wrap my head around unless there is some sort of infertility large scale event that science can't reverse. This population requires and enormous upscale in consumption and land usage and I have heard other predictions of science allowing us to live to 150 years old. If we can extend our lives to this age what percentage of population do we have to add to these numbers? Another 30 - 40% on top of this? My mind boggles!

I do apologize for my tangent, perhaps this wasn't the right place for it, but maybe looking at the bigger picture helps me to just accept that life is not supposed to last forever and it shouldn't. Maybe in some twisted way knowing that helps me to say goodbye and be at peace with what I have already lost and what I will inevitably loose in the future. Life will run it's cycle, we can only do our best with the time we have and lovingly remember those that have come and gone before us