Oh My God, I’m Going To Die!

It’s probably not perceived as the most sensible thing in the world to begin a blog of this ilk by asking: “what’s the point?” First thing that you should be aware of is that this is my book and I’ll do whatever the fuck I like, thank you very much. Secondly, I think it’s the best place in anything to start: The only reason the human race progressed to this stage of existence is by asking questions. So, yes, we’re going to discuss death.

Let me relate to you my experiences with death, I’m sure you’ll be fascinated. At the age of sixteen, I woke late one night to the thought “Oh my god, I’m going to die one day!” This rattled around in my skull for all of about 3 seconds before my synapses gradually developed the question: “And?” I found a certain degree of apathy to that startling revelation. Let’s face it, the opening years of my life had not exactly been enjoyable and the prospect of being subjected to 60 more of the same was blatantly unpalatable: this led me to the conclusion that death wasn’t really all that much of a problem to me.

That may seem a pretty callous statement to make and, sure enough, it is. I’ve had a lot of discussions about life and very few have focussed on the idea of making sure you don’t die. Yes, each and every one of us has concerns about slipping off the mortal coil, but the qualifier is that we don’t do it before we get to do any of the things that are important to us.

So, on that night, some time in 1996, I quickly evaluated what was important to me. Very quickly. It was a moment that could be compared to being asked at an interview: “so why do you want the job?” The truth was, I didn’t want the job, it just paid better than anything else that was available to me. Let’s face it, I could make the decision to be alive or I could just die. That really ought not to be a difficult decision: live or die? Ummm…

The decision ought to be simple. It ought to be so bone jarringly obvious as to make you laugh when the question passes someone's lips. But it rarely does. In fact, you're more likely to elicit a defensive reaction of “Oh, how could you say that?”. I can say it easily... VERY easily.

In the process of making a decision, it can be the first thing that crosses my mind: the most fundamental question to test whether your current direction is the right one. For example, “Hey, do you want eggs for dinner?” initially becomes a binary question “do you want some edible sustenance or would you like to kill yourself?” If you're taking a while to sort that question out, you've deviated from the path you want to follow. If you believe it to be possible that you would rather die than eat your next meal, your life choices need to be considered in the stark light of day. And, so, that's how I figure out whether I've made the right choice or not.

It's not to say that I spend hours agonising my own mortality and sometimes hope for death rather than continue in a shitty job, it's more that it provides an assessment of my most basic instinct – survival – when stacked against the overwhelming force of modern-day society. When “The Machine” begins to grind on me, I have to question my place in it. When I find myself believing that I have ended up in the wrong place, I have no choice but to move on.

Don't get me wrong, I am in no way advocating that there will ever be a situation where a dull job merits suicide - anybody who does resort to that is failing to see things in their proper context – but one has to have a respect for one's own life before you can really make a go of it. I suppose what I'm really suggesting is a matter of tolerance: just how much degradation can you stand at the hands of the mechanisms of society and corporatism before it makes you question the value of your life. Whenever it becomes a question, the only option available to you is to find something new.