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Cognitive dissonance is a term from Psychology 101. Simply put, it means "it can't happen to me."

The term can used when people continue to smoke regardless of all the knowledge they have that smoking can kill them, when we ignore the fact that obesity and diabetes go hand in hand and when we run a red light when we drive.

Most of us recognize the realities of what can harm us, but then again most of us put that knowledge into a closed closet in our minds. We tend to ignore the warnings until we've been burned. Not only do we suffer from cognitive dissonance, but we also have a good case of hubris. We believe we can beat the odds.

My computer is the holder of all my information, my columns, my personal and beloved photos. It is an essential tool to my daily life.

So, you would think that I would have taken the advice given by many that I should always back up my work. Yet, I chose to delay doing exactly what I knew I should do to protect the material in my machine. And I got burned. My computer crashed, taking everything in it with it.

Computers may make us believe we don't need to have things on paper anymore, but that just isn't so.

My computer breakdown experience has taught me that address books made of paper make good sense. They travel easily, and you don't even need an electrical outlet to find an address when you want it.

Photo albums may be bulky, but you can open them up and see your loved ones instantly. You don't have to wait for the computer to turn on to bring up the picture you want to see. Even if all your photos are on CDs or DVDs, they still have to go into a machine to be seen. Albums take up a lot of shelf space, but they don't disappear with the press of a button.

All the correspondence filed in my computer is gone and will never return. Fortunately for me, I also keep paper files of correspondence.

Not everyone has chosen to be computer savvy. My aunt is one of those, thank goodness. After my computer disaster, I started going over my paper files and found a letter from her dated December 1999. She wrote it during her 80th year. Even though she's a generation older, we had always been good friends. She's been a wonderful mentor to me, especially since my mother died early on.

We all need an older woman to light the way for us. She did this for me and her letter is a gem of optimism for all of us as we grow older.

"Here we are," she writes, "going into the next century — and I'm still around! Amazing isn't it? At eighty years of age — almost eighty-one — I'm mentally alert — physically fit, and can still walk two miles a day and swim sixty laps — no sweat!"

She goes on to tell me she's still driving and is excited about the next century and hopes to live well into it. She's an avid reader of my husband's books and writes, "I'm reading Ben's book about the next century. I hope I'll be a part of it for a few more years. Damn!" she exclaims, "I hate missing out on anything!"

My aunt is getting her wish, as she's alive and fairly well. She's still writing letters on paper, as she never learned to use a computer and in this case, happily so.

And I've learned my lesson well. No one is immune to misfortune when they ignore reality. Cognitive dissonance is no longer for me. Smoking really does kill, obesity begets terrible illnesses and computers can crash.