by John Graham

Created on: July 11, 2008

What constitutes an exciting life?

The word exciting already refers to something that doesn't necessarily happen as a daily event. It is a surprise, an oddity, an infrequent event, and yet because it is an adjective to "life" it applies more often than not.

That's a tough definition, for if you happen to experience freak of weather, say an enormous hailstorm, then an exciting life' implies that you experience these events quite often. Perhaps you live in tornado alley.'

If you served in the army then I could imagine each day in active service to be exciting if you survived that day. I might also replace the word exciting' by something else. However, most of us don't live in such environs. We don't leave our bed to survive each day, so our excitement might be very sporadic.

Perhaps one could make up for that by having exciting experiences in several different forms.

I think back to my episodes of excitement.

The first was when in clambering among the crowd to read our degree results posted on a door outside our college; I found that I had won a First in Mathematics. (Summa cum Laude that means.)

Then there was a win in a chess match by which I far exceeded the expectations of my grading. I beat a National Master. It doesn't matter that my opponent might have made a mistake. The win was still exciting and so was the later occasion in which I beat the Women's World Champion, Nina Gaprindashvilli.

Then came a job offer with the promise of remuneration that far exceeded my expectations. That was exciting because it promised me a great jump in what I could buy and do. The fact that it also required emigration and a new world made it doubly exciting.

My fastest marathon finish was not exciting so much as gratifying because I expect to do better the next time out. Our experiences are modified by our expectations.

In the end I don't believe that you can expect or anticipate an exciting life because each of these exciting events would have been diminished if they were due to occur regularly. The best you can expect is a life in which there are exciting events.

Perhaps we might realistically define an exciting life as one in which an exciting event occurs once each year. Looking back I believe that is the best we can expect or deserve.

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