The Ultimate Inevitability

Because life gets so boring on occasion, I end up resorting to daydreaming for a considerable portion of time. It's the only time my brain gets to cut loose and run riot and other mildly anarchic sounding phrases as well. Sometimes, the brain strays too far from the boundaries (even though there are no boundaries, but for the sake of this I'm declaring boundaries) of normality and delves into an as yet non-existent future regarding many different scenarios including, but not limited to, future career prospects, future relationships, future living situations, becoming famous, becoming homeless, winning the X Factor, buying an iPad, eating a Terry's Chocolate Orange and, probably most scarily and morbidly of all, imagining a close friend's funeral.

As humans, we're intelligent enough to not only be aware of our own mortality but also to blank it from our minds completely like it'll never ever happen to us in a million billion years for ever and ever, Amen. Somehow, my consciousness didn't get the memo (either that or it was just drifting off, not paying attention to reality again) meaning it occasionally super-fast-forwards to the ultimate inevitability. We will die. You, right there, yes, you reading this now. You will die. Sorry, but... it's true. Don't blame me. Don't blame anyone, there's nobody you can blame, except biology I suppose, but even then it's difficult to assign conceptual blame to a scientific field. If it's any consolation, I'll die too. Nothing special about me, I will cease to go on living one day, and so will every single one of the seven-billion amongst us. The thing is we won't all pop off at the same time on the same day. Some of us might make it to a ripe old age and just give up when we can't see or hear what's happening on Countdown any more. Some of us might unknowingly attempt to cross the road a second or two too early. Some of us might fall victim to incurable diseases or maladies. Again, for that one, blame biology... if you can.

This notion of death not having a schedule has also been picked up on by a Facebook app which I believe is called "If I Die" (it might not be that exactly, but since I can't be bothered to go check that's what I'm going to say it's called, that way I'm not directly advertising it just in case I so happen to be correct). Apparently, using this app, you can write a backlog of status updates to be released onto your active Facebook profile after you're done with this existential plane. Essentially, you're zombified through the medium of text, able to provide your loved ones with witticisms from beyond the grave. If it were me, I'd probably opt for vaguely inappropriate, sad reminders that I'm dead, such as "still dead, sorry bout that" or "not coming back today... or ever, lol" or "I suppose Belinda Carlisle was right, heaven IS a place on earth since I'm in HELL!!!"

Back to my stupid brain, though, and interestingly during my morbid daydreams, I never envisage my own demise, but I suppose that's mostly because it'd difficult to perceive imaginary events in my own future life after it's ended. That, plus I'm an egotist. However, imagining other people's funerals seems to be a common occurrence in my mindspace. Not common in the way that it happens every single time my brain runs off, more common in the way that Gunther may or may not show up in any given episode of Friends. Furthermore, whenever he does show up, his appearance is only minimal, almost background and he never has a main plotline focus of his own. In imagining such an event, I instantly do two things; the first of which being chastising and yelling at my mind for coming up with such a horrific thought and forcing it to stop thinking about it at once. Naturally the brain retorts with the idea that once a thought has occurred, it cannot be unthought, therefore bugging me with the notion that, in my mind, I've just killed off someone close to me and I do not wish to jinx the fact that they could actually die at some point in the near future since, in my head, that would make me entirely responsible. Which leads me to the second thing that I do; I instantly realise how much this person actual means to me and has influenced my life on some subconscious level. Then I go out of my way to make sure I keep in close contact with that person in the hope that my continued presence before them makes them feel somewhat good.

Basically, you're not really a close friend to me unless I've killed you in my mind and felt sad about it. However, since I hypothetically ended whoever is reading this by pointing out your future death, whoever you are, you are now apparently very important to me. Now don't you just feel loved?

Time

Whatever happened to time? When you're a child time seems infinite, school drags on forever, Friday night feels miles away from Monday morning. As you get older, you wake up, make breakfast, eat it, watch TV and suddenly it's night. And I'm not just saying that from a TV addict's perspective. Whilst, yes, I do get lost in television's radiant, plasma-fuelled glow for hours on end and never want to unplug it because it's my bestest friend in the whole wide world who I know will never ever leave me, even putting Scrubs repeats on (because Friends repeats now belong to subscription telly) for an hour or so seems to drain the day away.

Of course, it could just be the simple fact that it's still Winter and our top half of the Earth gets fewer hours of sun exposure than them southerners (*shakes fist angrily and mumbles 'grr Australia'*) that makes time feel fleeting. Statistically, we get approximately an hour and a half of daylight now and things will remain that way until mid-May. (Actually, we get more like eight hours, but with our adult perception of time it feels like a mere ninety minutes.) I suppose this is what makes me so glum every this-time-of-year-again. We're so engulfed in darkness that moods have to, by law, be lower than a Jamaican limbo champion competing on the seabed. Because of this, I start making a list of things I should do, things I need to do, things I want to do, and  things I know I'll never do - all such things appear in all of these lists - in an attempt to make me feel better about life. But that fact that I'm hypothesising about doing things and not actually doing them makes me feel bad about myself, even though I'm very aware that there are practicalities as to when and where I can do certain things and whenever I do have a chance to get on with something the motivation glands within me go straight to sleep the moment it turns dark, making it so that after 4pm I essentially become a brain dead moron with my head tilted to one side and a drooling tongue lolling out the corner of my mouth as I sit staring at a blank wall. Either that or a television.

The good thing about keeping time though is that I get to memorise the schedules of certain programmes that will televisualise themselves onto my eyes and ears and make me want to live, at least until the end of that particular episode, which reminds me, Scrubs is on again in a bit.