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Friday 12 May 2017

Would You Just... Stop Taking Life So Seriously?

Oh boy, I am tired from work last night. It wasn't even tough, I'm just getting too old for these late nights. I didn't go out afterwards, however, and I didn't drink. So that's grand.

I'm not going to be around this weekend because it is Jake's birthday, and he has the same ideas on size and duration of birthday celebrations as Bilbo Baggins. My next three days are booked solid. I just hope to be the mysterious Gandalf regaling youngsters with stories and fireworks, rather than the cantankerous old hobbit yelling that it's ProudFEET -- although as long as I don't spend the weekend passed out on pipeweed I'll take it as a win.

Anyway, before I put on my wizard's hat and disappear into Middle Earth, aka Jake's flat, I want to write a bit here so I can then go and party guilt-free.

I was thinking about existence a bit over my morning cereal, which I tend to do, so I guess I'll try to scribble out my thoughts now, for wont of anything more organised to say.

It's weird, existence, isn't it? I mean, none of it matters. None of it. There are seven billion of us, all thinking we're the important one, that it's our promotion or degree or car insurance or battles with personal demons that matter. But we're wrong. We're all just going to die. And everyone we've ever met or connected with or given birth to will also die, and every thought about bank accounts or dandruff or office sales leagues will crumble like ephemera torn apart on the breeze.

I, uhh, realise that sounds a little pessimistic. But I don't think it has to.

The thing is, it's so easy to die. OK, yes, that doesn't sound better, but bear with me. It is so easy to die, to stop existing. We're suffocating every instant, and we take a breath to save ourselves only long enough to begin suffocating again in the next instant. We're teetering on the precipice of destruction. It takes so much energy to keep ourselves from falling.

But there's no necessity. It's much more sensible, when you think about it, to not exist. It's the default setting. It's what we'll all be doing soon anyway. It's what we were doing for all of eternity before we were born. I don't remember it being so bad.

We have the biological urge to survive, for sure, but this is only an accident of evolution. Organisms mutated into existence, and some of these organisms mutated in ways that kept them existing, and these passed on their code, and the others were lost. Over millennia this has been hardened through insane amounts of repetition into the will to live, but it's still only an accident. Not a commandment from some God. Not a moralistic duty. Just an accident that we pass on.

So if we don't want to live, it's no big deal. It's hard work, after all, breathing, pumping blood, repairing wounds, remembering PIN numbers, thinking of new and exciting meals to cook every night. And it's hard work that in the end comes to naught.

We're not going anywhere. We're not reaching anything. The point of life isn't to procreate, it's just that procreation keeps life happening. Otherwise it'd be rather like saying the point of watching an episode of a TV show is to get to the next episode.

This is it, then. We bumble about for a few years -- three? fifty? -- and then it's over.

But, Christ, this isn't a bad thing. What it really means is: no pressure. If life is unimportant and meaningless and ending soon, then so are all our worries. If existence itself is not precious, then neither is your university degree that you might fail, or your car that has just broken down, or the fact your friend always looks so sexy in her slinky dresses while you look so misshapen and gross, or the lads in your office saying cruel things about you, or having to stay together for the kids, or having to break up for the kids, or confusion, or illness, or despair. If we're insignificant and temporary, then so is everything that troubles us.

And don't get me wrong, there will still be troubles. Your car will still break down, as will your body, and that will suck. But discomfort and strife are intimately tied to existence. There can be no pleasure, after all, without pain. No up without down. No beauty without Piers Morgan. It's all just part of the experience, the glorious, mysterious, terrifying ride.

You can get off whenever you want. Otherwise just enjoy it.

Or don't. It honestly is up to you.

1 comment:

  1. It ll all be alright in the end, and if its not alright, its not the end 😉💖

    ReplyDelete