Open Writing

I think I’ve had a brief glimpse of what it’s like when you die.

A guy leaned over, told me he was starting the anaesthetic and then…that was it. A half hour or whatever later and I’m in that state where you’re awake but the self control hasn’t kicked in. It’s when you give serious consideration about telling the nurse she’s got a beautiful body or lovely skin or something equally stupid.

No white lights, tunnels or departed relatives telling you how this place is great and that they’ve got cable and get to speak to the boss whenever. Wasn’t a lot of gnashing of teeth or wailing either for that matter. No dreams, I didn’t have to get up for the toilet, no rap music booming out from passing cars, nothing.

Best thing was I didn’t have to listen to anything about global warming and the climate change circus. I am up to here with this whole damn debate. You want me to be brutally frank? I mean one hundred percent “I kid you not” honest? I don’t give a damn. I’m just at the stage I don’t care. Yeah, I’ve heard it before. I should be concerned because we’re all going to burst into flames in a year or so, future generations are doomed and that flooding is going to take out whole countries. Gimme a break.

What is it about humans that they love living in a perpetual state of angst? We were seconds away from nuclear death in the fifties and sixties, millions of Asian communists were going to sweep into Australia if Vietnam fell in the seventies and then later there was a better than even money chance that AIDS would grab the rest of us. Now we’ve got swine flu. Happy days.

Then we have to worry about the rainforests, the whales, the Australia- specific guilt about our treatment of the Aboriginals and…and…you know the drill. When does it stop? Why have we made our lives so unbelievably complicated and guilt ridden?
On the global weather thing however, I did go through a period of caring. A brief period I have to admit. I read what I could; watched debates on TV, even spoke with a couple of people who had degrees in disciplines I’d never heard of. Hundreds of experts, just as many opinions. All backed up with irrefutable proof.

I even ventured the revolutionary idea that the whole thing might be part of a mysterious phenomenon known as a weather cycle and that perhaps these things have been happening for the odd billion years or so and that maybe we’d just hastened it a few seconds or so by kicking all the stuff into the atmosphere. Wow, how dumb was that? I got the impression it was very dumb. Yeah, perhaps they’re right. But if the temperature has only notched up another 0.8 of a degree in the last three hundred years or so, I don’t think I’ll be reaching for the valium or running the warm bath anytime soon.

No, it must be hard-wired into us that we have to worry, or agonise over something or other. Or that we have to feel guilty for most of our adult life. It’s a real human thing isn’t it? Either spend a life of regret about the past, about things we can’t change or weren’t responsible for, or live in a state or permanent apprehension about tomorrow or next week. When does it stop? Probably when the anaesthetic starts.

If you’re not too busy engaged in these sorts of activities, or over in the corner worrying, you can probably guess that I haven’t yet dragged social awareness into the back seat of the car for a bit of heavy petting. Sure, when I was younger and without the benefit of hindsight, we got together a few times, had a few laughs. But I realised pretty early on that the relationship wasn’t going to go anywhere. I sort of got the impression she was more concerned worrying about life than living it. And don’t you hate people like that?