Why Do We Need To Be So Precise?

Remember when we were children and the weather man would say things like 'tomorrow should be warmer than today and there is a good chance it will rain in the afternoon'? Now its more like: 'Tomorrow will be about five degrees warmer than today and there is a 40% chance of scattered showers tomorrow afternoon'.

You used to get stuck in traffic and you would listen to the radio or talk to the other people in the car and figure out you will get moving again soon. Now Waze tells us the slowdown will add 7 minutes. Is that really important?

And the biggest one is with analog (hands) clocks and watches we said it was around quarter past 8. Now its 8:13.... Do those 2 minutes make that much of a difference (unless you are soft boiling eggs)?

We do this with our ailments as well. If you look at the survival statistics for any cancer, you can find out what are your chances of making it to one, two, or five years. Does it really matter to you if your chances of making it five years are 90% or 7%? Does that change any of your actions?

I was told by my oncologist that going back on Femara will reduce my risk of recurrence by a couple of percentage points. Why do I need the detail? Either it will help or it won't. Yes its nice to know by how much it improves your odds but....

I have been amazed recently by how much we care about these little tiny details? Do we need to know there are 500 calories in that meal or that its about 1/3 of a day's worth of calories?

How much time do we waste worrying about tiny little changes that become minutiae in the big scheme of things? If you are dieting, you probably want to skip that second cookie or even the first one because that's common sense. Every thing matters in life but when the things get so small do we need to stress about them? Are we creating more stress for ourselves by obsessing over the details?

[I hate ending a blog post with a bunch of questions. I think of them like the book club discussion questions at the end of a book I enjoyed. I do not expect an essay back. I just write what I think.]