My latest unhealthy obsession is fixating on the thought of how it is I'm going to die.
Pretty fucked up, right?
It's not like it's something that's constantly on my mind, it's more like a question that I puzzle over in the stolen moments I find day to day when I'm alone with my thoughts – most often the fifteen minutes before I fall asleep every night.
'How am I going to die?'
I sit there with my eyes fixed at the ceiling letting the infinite waves of possibility wash over my imagination pushing my mind into new states of paranoia before my brain finally pulls the plug and switches into R.E.M.
I can’t really say that I’d recommend this to anyone as a hobby but it makes for some pretty vivid dreaming.
Sometimes I see myself dying in a fit of self indulgent hedonism – accidentally hanged by my own belt while receiving a blow job a la Hutchence. Other times it’s a boring case of pneumonia. The only thing that I know for sure is it’s never the same thing twice. There are just too many ways to die in the modern age to have any repeats.
I've dreamt up some pretty crazy stuff since I started playing this game, but I've come to realize: no matter how inconceivable the demise I conjure up, my imagination will never be able to beat reality when it comes to death.
I mean I could never think up some shit like this. It really seems as though fact is stranger than fiction.
Somewhere in the world right now someone is dying in a way you literally could never imagine. You'll read about it tomorrow. They'll be one of the novelty headlines on an Associated Press feed. They'll become part of the percentages helping to fill out life's boxscore. There are quotas that need to be met and statistics that need to be maintained and whether or not you like it 4.4% of all deaths this year will be because of ‘accidents’. It’s The Percentages.
We're all aware of them in some abstract way. We read about them and know that they're real, we just never believe that they'll ever apply to us. It's always some other poor bastard who gets the cancer or catches the AIDS or happens to board the wrong American Airlines flight.
You know that these things happen; you just never believe they're going to happen to YOU.
Everyone lives under the ignorant supposition that they will live a long normal life and die way down the line of 'natural' causes in the arms of someone they love like that geezer from the Notebook. This is the way we all want to die and it's a nice thought but it's highly unrealistic.
What's more likely is: you burning alive in a twisted pile of metal that used to be your Camry on the side of some highway after you lose control of the wheel. If it's not that then it's definitely going to be some kind of cancer. Or maybe, just maybe, you end up being one of the novelty headlines – like the three people who die every year in vending machine accidents. It's not likely, but then again neither is dying of 'natural' causes. Not these days anyway.
What started all of this for me was thinking about the percentages. Not in an abstract way like we all do when we read about this shit day to day. Instead I decided to tally up the deaths that I have come to know personally; real people with faces that I could relate to the numbers.
I thought about it for a while and by the time I was finished I was amazed to discover that for almost every type of death, no matter how improbable, there was a real example that I knew of that could approximate it. I realized that all of those headlines that I read about and believe to be so distant from the safe little world I live in are not so distant after all, that a lot of it has already happened to people I know (knew?).
Murder, suicide, disease, accidental death…they’re not as far away as we all like to think.
Take Paul for example. He lived across the street from my parent’s house when I was ten. He was in his early thirties with a son who was barely a year old. He was working on a construction site one day when an improperly secured pile of steel fell from a crane and landed on him like he was Wile E. Coyote in a Bugs cartoon. He was crushed and died instantly.
Who the fuck would ever imagine themselves dying like that? Extremely improbable right?
Nevermind though. It’s all accounted for in the percentages.
I could go on with examples but I’m sure you all have your own if you stop to think about it.
I know that it’s definitely not a productive way of life to fixate on this kind of stuff. If we all really felt the weight of the different ways we might die we’d probably never leave the house. In some way you have to ignore the statistics to live a happy, healthy life. I know this. Still, I can’t help myself.
Disease, murder, suicide, car crashes, plane crashes, swine flu, SARS, ebola, cancer, alzheimer’s, knife fights, bar fights, electrocution, falling into an uncovered manhole, slipping over the balcony rail of your apartment, skydiving accidents, workplace accidents, fatal sports injuries, poisoning, allergic reactions, overdose, fire, flooding, earthquakes, tornadoes, decapitation, superflu, pneumonia, heart disease, mad cow, flesh eating bacteria, aneurysms, hanging out with Phil Spector…
Fuck it. You know what; finish the list off yourself tonight before you fall asleep. Lay in bed for a while like I do and think about the percentages.
One piece of advice though – don’t waste your time thinking about death by ‘natural’ causes. It’ll never happen.
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