"You Wasted Life / Why Wouldn't You Waste Death?"

I read a couple books this year that compile near-death experiences. The stories have several similarities, but also some unique features.

The editor of the books specifically asked in his forward that readers not retell the stories as a way of keeping them from morphing into sensational tales different from the originals. So I'm just going to mention really briefly here that in one story the temporarily-dead guy overheard some others debating whether he was finished with his time on Earth and evaluating what he'd done so far with his life. He said a word they repeatedly used was "dissipation."

Tell me about it. Dissipation could be my middle name. I'm fairly certain the episodic play of my life performed in heaven is entitled "The Dissipation Monologues."

But the good news is, it's not just me. It's everyone. All the time. Virtually every element of human endeavor is a waste of time. The truthfulness of this really struck me at my kids' swimming lessons. Here was an expensive building and scores of people spending lots of time learning to make their bodies move through water. Why? Why does your body need to move through water? It doesn't. But we were all there doing it anyway. And the scene was repeated in practically every town in the nation that day.

The way in which people throw themselves into these distractions is almost indicative of their true understanding of the uselessness of the activities. Like a procrastinator who is going to do the world's best cleaning job in the basement, and then when that's finally finished, he's going to complete the fastest Sudoku ever. (I've just described two scenes from "The Dissipation Monologues.") How else do you explain professional sports? Not only do the athletes dissipate their lives by becoming world-class at crap that doesn't matter at all, the rest of us dissipate our lives by watching them.

A good blog post would end with a prescription for the future. "Don't do that; instead do this." But I never said I was a good blogger. (And if you've read more than one post, you already know just how not good of a blogger I am.) So I'm just going to end with the first part: don't do that. But I can't tell you what to do instead because I don't know. I just know that 99.99% of what I do in life is a complete waste of time, and the other 0.01% is a fluke.

Title from the Modest Mouse song "Ocean Breathes Salty."

via oneofthebest

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