Thoughts of Death
blog
Thoughts of death quicken the pulse. Today we are here: seeing colours, thinking thoughts, kissing girls. Tomorrow we are gone and there is nothing. In between there a lot of futility. Imagine being on your death bed: what do you regret not doing? What do you wish you hadn’t wasted done?
I can’t decide whether Jade Goody is lucky or unlucky to know that she is going to die. She can settle accounts, be with the people she loves, reflect on what life meant, put plans together for her children’s welfare, and leave the world on good terms. On the other hand, she knows that she is going to die which rather puts a dampener on the time she has left.
What if there were a text message service that told you several times a day “you are going to die soon, stop wasting time” — would we become inured to it? Would I still have watched the laughably misjudged teen spy thriller Stormbreaker? Would I have watched the cynical superhero/rom-com crossover My Super Ex-Girlfriend? Would I have spent thirty minutes clicking around Seety.co.uk, being mildly impressed to see that the room I lived in when I first moved to London is available for all to see? Would I have spent three minutes on this site working out my life expectancy? I don’t know. Probably not. But what would I have done instead? Ah, that is the question.