PLAYING DEAD

At some point in everyone’s childhood (at least in mine) we found ourselves wondering what it must feel like to be dead. Sometimes it was brought on by an unexpected death in the family or a close friend. Sometimes it was just kids being curious about the universe around us. We’d lie down (if we weren’t in bed already), close our eyes and hold our breath and take note of the sensations. Depending on the person we’d startle ourselves back to reality or simply open our eyes with a “that was interesting” thought. If you’re male within a certain age you probably grew up playing some sort of “War” game outside where you had to count to ten or twenty if you got “killed” before you could come back to life and begin playing again. We couldn’t “reboot” the video game and begin anew back then. As we grew older we may have had to do something similar during our military training or paintball games. In any event we all got pretty good at “playing dead” by the time we got to adulthood. So much so that parts of us were dead (or at least incapable of living). By that time we no longer knew who we were, what we were doing or where we were going. We were young enough and arrogant enough to try and convince ourselves and the world at large we were smarter than anyone else on the planet and had a better idea of what to do and when, where and how to do it. I have yet to meet someone who would stand there and say “Yep…I’m as dumb as a fence post but I plan on continuing to learn what I don’t know the rest of my life.” More often than not it is always “You’re telling me something I already know. Why are you wasting my time?” and more often than not…it’s from someone younger than I am who comes from one of those generations where nothing useful was taught because it was all cut out of the budget and fewer than any other generations before or after them graduated from high school…much less college. This in no way suggests older is better or smarter. When Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Paul Allen were in their teens and early twenties they were well on their way to changing the world as we knew it. Coincidentally they happen to be my age now (RIP Steve). The difference between them and the vast majority of young people today is they remain curious and are always looking for that next new innovation, the BIG PICTURE and the small details. Young people today are content to let someone else come up with it, stand in line to buy it first and then proclaim they’ve known all about it “forever” and how they can do even more things faster without having to get up off of the couch. All of this stuff designed to make life quicker and easier has enabled them, and the rest of the world at large, to be supersonic multi-taskers. What used to take a person a forty hour week to do can now be done in ten minutes. Rather than have more time to live and enjoy life we’re working twice as long and hard to keep up with the information flow…never mind the fact they need fewer of us to do this these days. Vacation days and weekends are scrutinized and used as a reason for getting rid of you if the opportunity presents itself because “you’re just not giving it your all anymore”. It’s no wonder that “Zombies” are a cult phenomenon these days. The entire workforce of the world is inhabited by the walking dead. They don’t think, they don’t feel and it doesn’t matter if a limb falls off…you don’t have health coverage for it anymore anyhow. We’ve all been programmed to “Play Dead” until you actually do die because there’s no retirement benefits either. Nobody is going to fix any of this for us either. The “Government” is broken at all levels and incapable of fixing itself much less us, they can’t even provide us with an honest accounting of where the money comes from and goes to. Neither political party is in any position either…that would require them to give things up that are near and dear to them like money and power. This in no way suggests we revolt and attempt to overthrow everything. There’s enough stupidity going on in this country without adding to it and we’ve become our own worst problem in this respect and others. We’ve played dead for so long we wouldn’t know where to start without hurting ourselves more than we already have by our years of complacency. Maybe we should instead sue the Governments and make them give back all of the money we’ve given them over the years (with interest) and gotten little in return for it except for more demands for more money because a few people are expecting seven figure bonuses at the end of this year for mishandling our money once again. This game is over and I think it’s time for me to come back to life again… sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…