Seriously? You didn’t see this coming? You’re whole life thus far has been leading up to it for fucksake. Now you’re surprised? Do you think you’re special? That it’s not going to happen to you? Fucking numpty. Didn’t you get an inkling when Steve Jobs died? Too long ago? What about David Bowie? Stephen Hawking? No? Let me make it perfectly clear then, lay it out for you, because apparently these days it’s bad form to mention it. You are going to fucking die. Not pass away or move on, but DIE, DIE, DIE! Too enthusiastic? Sorry. I’ll dial it back. Die. Hopefully not right now, or even soon, the when is the issue. It’s all relative see. If we compare your life expectancy to that of a fruit fly then you’re practically fucking immortal, but if we’re looking at the life expectancy of a rock then your life barely registers. Not that rocks are alive exactly. Or at all.
Don’t worry though, death is not stalking you, not waiting at the bottom of the stairs, though it might turn up if you fall down them. Time is not running out, life does not have an expiration date, you’re not a pint of fucking milk, long life maybe. I can promise you this, you will never die until you do. You will be no nearer to death at the end of this sentence than you were at the beginning assuming you make it to the end of the sentence. See? Still alive. Not to say that you aren’t dying, technically you are, sort of, as much as you ever will be, even though you’re not. You can’t get any nearer to death than you are at any given moment because death is absolute, it’s total fucking oblivion but without any total or any oblivion. Or any fucking.
Which means you can’t choose your moment of death either nor can anyone choose it for you, death can only happen to you when it does, you can’t dodge it, cheat it or avoid it, despite what you may have heard death is nothing like taxes. There is no such thing as dying too soon or too young and your life won’t be a waste if you do nor can you have a near death experience without actually dying and you certainly can’t be dying and then get better because if you do get better then you weren’t dying, you were just very fucking poorly.
It is especially important for younger types to appreciate this, and by younger I mean anyone under the age of forty, which is now the new sixteen. Youngish people live in a perpetual contradiction where they don’t think they will ever die yet consider almost everything to be life threatening. Not being hit by a car when crossing the road for example or not being electrocuted in the bath by a hairdryer that’s in a drawer in the bedroom or not being on a plane that is missed by another plane by five hundred fucking metres, which incidentally is nothing like as dangerous as not being on a plane that hits the ground with its wheels, also known as landing. Even if some of these things could almost hurt you they certainly can’t almost kill you because nothing can. Almost dying is impossible which is why it is completely harmless if someone fires a gun at your head and misses, though I wouldn’t encourage it, apart from the missing part.
No one ever gets close to death, death is a miserable old shit and he’s got no friends. Swipe left. When he does take your hand there is no choice, no coming back, no heimlich maneuver or defibrillator, no mouth to mouth or smoke blown up your arse. Dead is the complete opposite of ill. See how comforting this all is? You will never be closer to death than you are right now. It’s not the journey, it’s the destination, motherfuckers.
THE ACCIDENTAL HUMAN 