“I don’t ask what’s the point, questions like that will kill ya.” – Denny Crane, Boston Legal
“I love life because what more is there” – Anthony Hopkins
“Upset the established order [...] everything will become chaos. You know the thing about chaos? It’s fair" – The Joker, The Dark Knight
Why are we here? A question that depending on your state of mind can cause quite a lot of damage. Even more pragmatic still – what’s the point? These questions cross many people’s minds, usually just before they enter a mid-life crisis. The problem is I’m only nineteen and I have now asked myself both of these within a matter of minutes last week.
This could mean one of three things. One: I’m somehow inferior to the rest of the human race (highly likely) and my body is only engineered to last until I’m forty. Two: It was one of those life changing moments when you start to appreciate what you have and look forward to the future. Or three: I need a check-up from the neck up. I’m pretty sure it’s number two, but three definitely comes into it.
I started asking myself these questions when I was helping print a magazine I write for called Living Memories. It is a local history magazine that sells quite well considering the size of the town I live in. I enjoy doing it don’t get me wrong, but on this occasion I had to help put all the pages, one to thirty, in order by hand until all nine hundred copies were done. It took two very long days in a tiny damp room that was even colder than being outside. At 4 o’clock that afternoon, when it was going dark outside and I’m covered in paper cuts and there is still no end in sight, those two questions I mentioned at the beginning popped into my head.
It was then I decided that things would be different. I’m well known for having an opinion that isn’t always widely shared, but I though seeing as I want to become a writer I would find a way to get my opinion out there. I am a student after all, so this will probably be my only chance to be young, opinionated and foolish. Hence how this blog has come about, along with many other promises I have made to myself. For a start I would like to get out a little more, changing my life from being in the same situation ten years from now to being unaware where I’m going to be ten minutes from now. I know that’s a slight exaggeration but you understand what I mean. I intend to make my final two years at university worth it, seeing as I will have it easier than newer students financially and because tax payer’s money is tied up in my grants and fees. Don’t get me to point out where because I really don’t know – they give me money and I don’t ask questions. I’d like my chosen career as a writer to be well on its way by next year. This blog is apparently good writing exercise so it’s all good.
So anyway, this was the moment I started to appreciate life just a little more. Nothing much to it but there you go. Now, hopefully instead of dying of old age or some debilitating disease, I will get taken out in a hail gunfire, or maybe stabbed by an angry girlfriend, or maybe I’ll jump out of a plane and my shoot won’t open. Well if someone is willing to blow me away with bullets, stab me or sabotage my parachute, then I must be doing something right.
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