I am sure in the face of our upcoming election for the presidency, the list would be much larger, and would now have political overtones as a deciding factor. If you are a Democrat, anyone showing signs of being republican are certainly going to hell. If you are a Republican, anyone with democratic leanings is certainly suspect, and most will probably go to hell also.
The heaven/hell thinking also pervades religious beliefs. No matter what religion one is and no matter what tolerance that religious belief promotes, most people are sure others that are not of their particular blend of religion are going to have a tough time finding those pearly gates. With the tens of thousands of flavors of Christianity, not to mention other major religions and their thousands of subsets, it looks like everyones vision of heaven is going to be a pretty empty place to live after we pass on.

As I get older, I have more friends and acquaintances develop some serious medical issues. Of course it is easy to determine the cause. They obviously eat wrong, do not exercise, drink, or do none of those things, and that is the problem. Likely they did drugs when they were young, and smoked different types inhaled products. There is no doubt why they became so ill, anyone can see that.

Of course in my case, my body was born in perfect condition, any probability of a future medical condition is non existent. I also have spent my life doing all the things I should do, and none of the those things which may have an influence on my health in a negative way. By golly it is quite a shock the first time something does not work as expected!

As I am sure most people do, I looked for someone or something to blame. Something they put in food, or something I breathed in when visiting some big polluted city. It was probably caused by eating some unwashed fruit, or consumed fish that had DDT, or mercury in its body.

Once I went through that list, it is on to the spiritual side of why something is not right. God is punishing me, and until I figure it out and made it right, I will remain ill. Once I figure out what it was I did that was wrong, my health will be restored, and everything will be good again with my body.

If I went through all my memories and can not find anything, then it must be God has forgotten about me. I did not actively practice my religion by going to church often enough. Or maybe I have too many differing views that stray to far away from the mainline concepts of my faith of choice. Once I get back in line with the mainstream majority with my faith, my health problems will go away.

If that does not work, there is the other side of religion. The Devil, or Satan if you will has been allowed to torment me by God. I am the modern day version of Job, and the devil has decided to get right down to it and attack my physical health in an attempt to make my spirit weak. I can not believe this was allowed to happen, but now that I have figured it out, I know all I have to do is wait and continue living a righteous life, and everything will be restored, just as it was for Job.

Finally reality starts to creep in, and the truth becomes apparent. Stuff happens with our bodies. We have one tens of millions of cells from disparate body parts all trying to function and reproduce, and sometimes a cell gets it wrong. It is nobody’s fault and there is no spiritual connection. It just happens….

Getting sick is always interesting to me. Especially the flu. Whenever I get the flu, I relive every bang and bump that I experienced since the last time I had the flu. I don’t know if everyone feels those bumps and bangs a second time or it is just me. When I almost smashed my finger in a car door last winter and it throbbed for a few hours? It is a given my finger is going to hurt for a few hours just like it did when I almost smashed it. So on and so forth, one bump, pull, and hurt after another. For some reason the only thing that does not hurt again is any dental work I have had done. Or maybe among all the other hurts, it just does not stand out because it was not painful to start with. It is like my bodies pain memory has to be flushed from time to time.

It took me a number of years before I could tell the difference between a bad cold, and the flu. I am not sure yet I have it right. When I get sick, but not too sick I decide it is a cold. If it is from my neck up I decide it is a cold. If the first few days, I am feeling very bad, and by the third day I am looking forward to dying so I won’t hurt, I decide I have the flu. There is one last give away sign, I am never hungry with the flu, nor thirsty.

I am now on day three that I have actually felt bad. My nose is stuffed, then runny, my body hurts, and I have chills, and hot streaks. I don’t feel like I am going to die though, so I suspect this is just a cold. Also today instead of wishing I would die so I did not hurt, I had about 20 minutes of starting to feel better.

There is not a lot of difference in the way I treat either one. I am not a doctor fan, nor a pill person. Usually I try to rest, and take aspirin, drink fluids and stay warm. I think almost all seasonal illness we get goes away on its own just as quickly as it does when we pump ourselves with things we think we need to make us feel better.

I used to hate getting sick. Now I understand that just like my spiritual self, cold’s and flu’s are using my body as a survival mechanism. They enter into it, use it for a few days and once they determine they have had ample opportunity to be spread to others, they allow themselves to die off as they have completed their function of procreation of a new generation. Thinking about colds and flu in this aspect allows me to tolerate them better.

There are other times when I become ill, and feel terrible for a brief time, usually less than 24 hours. I do not always think this illness is physical, but somehow spiritual. My body or spirit is getting tweaked for some reason. Sort of like brining your car in for a tune up, or installing a new version of Windoze on your computer. It needed some modifications from where it was at.

Of course all of this is just my thinking at this point in time. Maybe in a few years I will see illness as something different. But for right now, thinking about being sick in the manner I described works for me, and makes the reasons for being ill to start with understandable at some level.