The ticking time bomb

You can’t hear it. You can’t see it. You are aware of its existence on some level, buried deep in your subconscious. Like the elephant in the room, except this elephant is painted the same colour as your walls and it’s wearing a lampshade as a disguise. This elephant is one motherfucking good hider.

Somewhere, a clock is ticking. A clock attached to a bomb. A biological bomb that is going to go off at some point. Tick, tick, tick. It’s matching your heartbeat, synching effortlessly with your breathing, your life force working as one. This is no strained coalition. It’s part of you. It’s as much a part of you as the mole on your arm or that bit of fat on your stomach that you can’t seem to shift.

We are all, from a very young age aware of our own mortality. From the age of three children start asking questions about death. Why do people die? Where do they go? Why haven’t you died yet?

Most of us try not to think about it. We bury it (appropriately) in a locked box somewhere at the back of our cerebrum. No point wasting time pondering on it, we reason. It happens to the best of us. We only face it briefly, when we are forced to do so. The death of a loved one or perhaps the faint brush of deaths icy hand when one is confronted with the uncertain outcome of a test result.

Too busy living to worry about dying, life’s too short.

There it is.

Life is too short.

Is it though? Average ages particularly in the western world are higher than they’ve ever been. Most of us get 70 years or more. That’s enough right? Plenty of time to do what we need to do. Find someone nice, maybe sire a couple of kids, see the good bits of the world. Also sex, lots of sex.

Maybe, if you’re lucky you get to contribute. Leave a mark on the world that means that you are celebrated beyond your own life. Mozart is still heralded over 300 years after his death and he only lived to thirty five for fucks sake. Mind you, they’ll still be talking about Hitler for a long long time so that ain’t always a good thing.

The problem is, none of us has any real idea how long we’ve got. Unless you’ve been diagnosed with something really nasty and by then it’s probably too late to write that novel or paint that masterpiece.

It occurred to me the other day we all might live very differently if we knew how long we had. If on your 16^th birthday (for those who get that far) you opened up an envelope and it had an expiry date on it.

Perhaps the days wasted moaning about inconsequential stuff would be the first to go. Maybe people would spend more time in the pursuit of enjoyment. Maybe anarchy would ensue. An “I’ve only got months to go so screw this” attitude.

Hearing that you’ve only got 697 days left to live might make you want to do some good things with your life. You’d almost certainly want to spend more of it with your loved ones. Hell, you might even want to join Cameron’s big society (but somehow I doubt it).

Sometimes, we live like we’ve got forever. Maybe we need to remember that every day is a little gift, like the inside of a Kinder Egg.

I await the iDeath app from Apple with interest….