A Kamakaze Approach to Life
Today is my 43rd birthday. Birthdays always get me feeling a little philosophical and this year is no exception!
Yesterday I wrote this having just emerged from watching a film - Fire of Love and had something of a revelation. The film tells the story of 2 fearless volcanologists whose shared passion for volcanoes led them to study all around the world, save thousands of peoples lives (if not more), and (Spoiler Alert!) bring about their untimely deaths - swallowed by a volcano moving at over 100 mph.
Blinking in the light of the film, I realise that we truly have nothing to lose by indulging our passions, our desires and seeking our dreams. We weren’t built for comfort. We were built to experience. Everything in our human world is set up to mollycoddle us into a strange life of paralysis and convenience. Do we really want to live like this?
If I were to ask you when in your life you felt like you were truly living, I would be willing to be that it wasn’t indoors. How ironic that the phrase “living our best lives” has emerged in a decade where the best we could hope for for 2 years was a new series we could binge watch.
Imagine being sick, going to hospital, having your operation and then being told that your hospital bed is the best place for you?
Outside is dangerous. You might get hurt. You’ll have to find food, water, shelter. Here there is medicine, there is care, there is food, a warm bed, all the TV you can consume, books you can read and other patients to meet. Would you stay?
Of course you wouldn’t. Because you know that there is a life worth living out there beyond all those things. A life that is worth sacrificing all the comforts of hospital for, because outside that place, you can be you.
I worry that we have become swaddled in a suffocating blanket of comfort which kills life, squashes creativity and beats desire down into a resentful pit in our bellies. It is from this pit that we are encouraged to spew our vitriol online - shouting at strangers until we are empty, spent and unable to tolerate our environments when faced with the inevitable challenges ahead.
A volcano in Colombia was assessed in 1985 by volcanologists who recommended an evacution plan be set in motion to protect the residents of 5 neighbouring villages. The government ignored them and consequently 25,000 people died in the mud slides that the volcano triggered. Does any of this sound familiar?
Here we are in 2022 and we have scientists tearing their hair out the world over as governments consistently ignore their warnings about the forthcoming damage climate change will bring. And yet, they make insipid pledges to change and address, quite literally, the smallest thing - plastic straws - and ignore the cow, on their plate, in the room which is responsible for an estimated 52% of global carbon emissions.
The thing they don’t want you to know, is there is nothing to fear from the unknown. In tribes, they help one another and fill in the gaps. If someone is ill, the community provides for them. They share resources, rather than hoarding them. I love George Monbiot’s writings on “public luxury, private sufficiency”. The elites have been selling to us a dream that we really should have realised by now is IMPOSSIBLE. The only consequences of chasing individual wealth is that we continue to line their pockets with money we hand over to assuage our insecurities, to keep up with the Joneses, to show off to our friends, to give our children “the best start” in life, and a bulging savings account which is supposed to give you comfort. The truth is, when the day comes that you are confronted with your own mortality, you won’t be able to buy your way out of it and all that money, that saving, that self-obsession, will amount to nothing because you will have wasted the greatest and most accessible gift we all have - TIME.
Remember that ‘90’s clothing brand “No Fear”?
That is how we should be living. You don’t need to take massive risks to live without fear - just pure acceptance and self love. If you can let yourself be guided by your own intuition that what is supposed to happen for you, then the rest is easy. What would you do if you had no fear?
Imagine for a moment how it would feel if you had no fear of dying or illness or injury.
No need to hoard wealth for future generations
Zero insurance payments
No luxury items
No need for a mortgage
No need to save
No need to worry
You will die. It is certain.
The only thing worth consuming are experiences. Everything else is worthless.