Medicare for Ants

It just seems so arbitrary sometimes. The things we do with our lives.
I write numbers and letters into computer software, so that I can determine rates of hospital procedures, so that we can write a report about where these procedures rates are high, so that we can say that there is an overuse of healthcare, so that we can, ultimately, try to reform Medicare.

What is Medicare anyway? And healthcare more broadly? What are all of these things that we've built up around us to be called a civil society? Why are we always trying to maximize life? To beat the system and evolve to a place where everyone is and should be expected to live until they are 113?

And what is equality? Is it innate? Are we programmed to constantly figure out a way to keep as many of us alive...and satisfied...as possible? When did quality of life become something we could strive for, other than just life? Does compassion drive us - me - to try to solve health and equality problems that we've created ourselves?

Maybe arbitrary is the wrong word. Pointless, bizarre, hilarious. Do ants have a version of Medicare that we have no way of ever comprehending? Would an outside observer - an alien - think how totally weird our network of interactions are?

If I keep going to work, if we all keep going to work, instead of laying in bed and eating ice cream, or being penniless and wandering in the mountains, I'm just perpetuating this bizarre thing we call life. Or even if I do eat ice cream and hike, it's still the same outcome.

I'm not saying we shouldn't go on doing the things we do, or not doing the things we do. I just find it all so strange sometimes...and where I often come back to when I start to feel unstimulated by the ambiguity.