Life's a ...?
During our many inane conversations, a friend expressed his inability to understand life. He’d just returned from a funeral. But I couldn’t think of anything to say. Anything I thought correct anyway.
I wanted to tell him so many things and nothing at once. Death is something we never talk about, you know. I mean, my mum would gladly answer more questions on sex than on death. Death is a bigger taboo. “Mom, where are my grandparents?” “Oh dear, they are in Nigeria.” “Cool! Can I go visit them?” “No dear, it is very, very far.” “Oh okay.”
So how does life work? Two lust ridden people have sex, the condom unfortunately breaks and the strongest sperm reaches the ovaries and buries itself in the egg. Nine hormone ridden months later; life! As the parents and relatives gather round the little thing, they coochie-coo about the little toes and fingers and the “Oh he has your eyes!” The child grows up, poops a lot in the beginning and his favourite uncle calls him a ‘grubby brat’. He goes to school and pulls the pigtails of girls. Then a few years later he jacks off thinking of the very same girls. College and an ‘I do’. He then has his own grubby brats who in turn have their own and one fine day, he kicks the bucket over a large whisky while reading the paper out on the porch. That is, if he’s lucky.
So what is the meaning of living if the only thing that is certain in life is that we are going to die?
A child is afraid to jump in the swimming pool for the first time because he doesn’t know what will happen. Will he drown? Will the water demon hiding under the tiles devour him? He doesn’t know so he sits, waiting and shivering in the cold, observing those around him. Suddenly he’s pushed by a cold hand. The coach, tired of seeing the child hover, pushes him. The child splutters. There is water everywhere. He waves his hands about. He finds that when he moves his hands about, he can balance himself. He gains confidence. And stops to thrash around and experiments with his hand movements. He wades across to the other side and soon, is running out of the pool to jump in again with the other boys. The fear is gone. He knows now what happens after he jumps in. And he knows how to tackle it. He is not afraid anymore.
The thing is that we spend all our lives tottering on the edge of an unknown pool, knowing we will have to jump in one day whether we like it or not. We can go in smiling; yelling happily or we can hover around until the cold hand pushes us in. We have to go into the pool. Only choice we have is whether we hold onto the railing till someone pushes us in or we jump in madly, screaming happily like we did when school let out.
I don’t know what’ll happen when we fall. But if, there is nothing after the fall, I wanna make sure that the time before the fall was well spent. I'm gonna collect all the smiles and laughs, tears and hugs and kisses so that when I'm talking to myself as I fall down the rabbit hole, I can giggle madly at each memory. And if there is something in the after life after all, well then; bring it on!
You listening dodo?
