Almost Everything is Bonkers
I recently saw a baby notice a statue.
We were both waiting in line in the sun to get into an event in the inner city, this baby and I. I didn’t know the baby personally. She was looking over a parental shoulder, scanning the crowd, when her eyes fell on the statue above us. It was still and stern and pointing while riding horseback, its copper eyes staring down at the baby, whose brain was occupied, as all baby brains are, with trying to decode the universe. That was the moment I saw for the first time how bonkers statues are.
Public Service Announcement: almost everything is bonkers. This is important to remember when reality seems just a little bit too real and the bits you have to deal with seem terribly urgent and not as fun as they should be. Remember: some people - even some nerdy scientists - think we’re in a simulation; that there’s an alternate reality humming along somewhere alongside this one. A reality in which things like dice don’t exist. Or light. Or shopping trolleys. Or bananas. Or Donald Trump, or your boss, or global warming or the library book you can’t find or chemical reactions or helium balloons or uncles or tiny hats that babies wear or cake or bottoms or traffic jams. Who knows what doesn’t exist in these worlds that are thus far only theoretical and about which know only that we do not know anything? The possibilities are endless!
Not comforted yet? Stay with me. If someone from an alternative reality landed in a beam of light right in front of you and asked you for a tour, imagine how bonkers thing would seem. Imagine statues.
Imagine seeing a platypus for the first time. It has a beaky thing and webbed feet and fur and poison and it lays eggs.
Imagine seeing lightning.
Or explaining the feeling of being about to sneeze.
Think of how we fold things, and organise things, and why we do that. Why do we do that?
Think of the thing you do to feel productive - is it work? Is it raking up leaves? Is it cross-stitch or building a house or playing a computer game? Do you fill in forms or sew up wounds or pretend to be other people or blow air through a horn? Humans tend to ascribe status to acts of human endeavour but really, in the scheme of things, when you zoom right out, they all seem equally ridiculous and fruitless and brave and noble and frankly kind of adorable.
Think of regret. How ridiculous is regret! And guilt! Ridiculous! Wasted time on the fictional timeline that might not be real anyway. Process the guilt, deal with the regret, go and engage with a different part of the simulation. Take up cross-stitch maybe. Knit a hat.
Sleep is magic. Like, video-game-style magic. Imagine the questions you’d need to field on that one from your alien stranger. What do you mean there’s a level where you physically recharge and heal and become stronger? What do you mean you also get to mentally sort through your problems without even having to be awake for them because your brain plays itself a little cinematic story in the form of a thing called a dream? And also its cozy and comfortable and when you change the sheets you feel like a new human entirely? Utterly bonkers.
Things that are also bonkers include money: it’s a fiction. Rich people are always talking about this. ”Money is a fiction! It’s just an idea! Value is just a construct! Susan, what time do you have me booked in for my spa?” They’re right, though. This fact doesn’t help you pay the bills but it sometimes helps to know that while money makes the (obviously simulated) world go round, it doesn’t really mean anything. It doesn’t define you for instance. Even if you’re rich. Not when the people from the other simulation come to visit and say, “So this one’s got more shiny coins than that one. But does he cross-stitch?”
Sometimes it’s nice to pretend to be a baby. Or an alien from another reality. Just so you can look around and realise how silly everything is.
This has been a Public Service Announcement: it’s kind of up to you to decide what you value. We have to pay our bills and rake our leaves, sure, but don’t forget to factor in the platypus and clean sheets and cross-stitch and bananas and lightning.
This was originally published in The Big Issue, which you can buy from your local vendor and they’ll be thrilled if you do. So do.