Should You Live? – A Reason Why You Should.

Life is precious. Although the great irony of human civilisation is that only a precious amount of people actually realise this. To be here right now is a triumph, but before you start taking credit for it – its nothing to do with you. Its a lottery. Heres a quick summary from the BusinessInsider; or if you’re lazy, I will summarise. The chances of your parents meeting is around 1 in 20,000. Then the odds of them falling in love or accidentally having children is another 1 in 2,000, combine those odds and you’re already at 1 in 40,000,000. Mix that with 100,000 eggs created by a woman and exactly* 4 trillion sperm produced by a man. The odds of a specific egg and a specific sperm meeting at a specific time to create you is now at about 1 in 400,000,000,000,000,000. This is pretty insane. But thats not even the start of it, because this is the same figure for every single ancestor in our whole biological existence. so the 1 in 400 quadrillion chance is multiplied to such an extent that it is impossible to even write the number in this blog. But I make the impossible possible so, it is 1 in 10, with 2,685,000 zeros after it. Oh and the average lifespan for men and women in the developed world is around 72 years of age*.

The chance of winning the UK lottery is 1 in 14,000,000. People talk about it with amazement, ‘what would you do if..’ or ‘how lucky must you be to win… ‘. The fact is the lottery doesn’t even come close to the chances of being alive, right here in the most prosperous, advanced time in human history. If you’re reading this, you’ve already won. Not only that even the people who are not reading this have already won*. Well done guys! Now I could go into a serene speech about how wonderful life is and how it must be cherished, but Charlie Chaplin already did this perfectly 80 years ago.

Imagine arriving on this planet with consciousness and spending your life trying to print documents you have no interest in. In a workplace which suppresses thought, suppresses creativity and merges you into a system which only has one focus; to improve their balance sheet. This is what I used to do. In fact this is what a lot of people do.

Wishing time away. Waiting. Waiting for time to pass. You have 72 years* on this planet and you’re literally waiting for some of that time to pass. Wishing it away. You’re selling this time. You have 72 years and you’re selling little parts of it to do something you don’t enjoy. But the office life doesn’t just take away your time, it changes you, you come to think that’s the way it has to be.

I feel sorry for Mondays, Mondays get a bad reputation. People bemoan them. ‘Its Monday tomorrow, ugh.’ or simply ‘I hate Mondays’. I say poor Monday. You don’t hate Monday, you hate what you do on a Monday. You have sold your Monday and then blamed Monday. But ‘Ahh, its Friday!’ Friday is the best, Friday isn’t like Monday. This is because you know, Friday means you have two days, two whole days to not do the thing you didn’t like doing, which you did for the previous 5 days. The maths on this is; you’re doing something you dislike for 71.43% of the week. Recreating, for an office that does not want you to be creative.

You wake up in the morning, sad to see that the alarm is due to go off in 3 minutes, you do not look forward to the day and you’re glad when its over. Tick tock. You check your bank account at the end of each month to try and convince yourself its all been worth it. To then see it all spent on stuff you don’t need or particularly want. You work more and more overtime because, more money is better right? If the number is higher at the end of the month then you have a better job. You need a higher number. To incorrectly quote a Fatboy Slim song, you; Eat. Sleep. Slave. Repeat.

The post is a reminder to myself, a reminder to make the most of life. Do the things that make you happy (****) as many times as you can (****). Look forward to Mondays by filling them with things you want to do (****).

Mindfump.

*Not exactly.

*This will be references later in the blog to give the illusion of structure

*I even wanted to write a printer sounding interlude but I don’t know how to type the printer noise.

*Told you I would reference it again

*Which lets face it is almost every single person on the planet.

*Yes, actually you this time.