How Do You Sleep At Night?

I have an annoying habit of having an overactive mind. It won't let me sleep much of the time, which leads to my being tired much of the time.

It's a bit shit really.

Usually I just write something vaguely interesting, or a stupid story and then I can stop thinking.

Here is one such story, a musing if you will.

Live every day as if it were your last.

I have always found this to be a bit of a stupid statement for many reasons.

Firstly because it doesn’t elaborate enough on why it is your last day. Is it everyone’s last day? Or just mine?

If it is everyone’s, and they know it, the streets would be an orgy of chaos. A sanctuary for the seedy underbelly of the human mind. People would be looting, shooting and doing all that stuff you kind of wish you could do but were always afraid to.  Of course this situation also has positive sides, for example you would finally ask out that girl you like... But then you would also bitchslap that dude in your office that you hate, too. You’d pop caps in various asses just for the hell of it. You’d take up crack because you wanted to know what it was like but you were always too busy being a functioning member of society.

And then how would the planet end, huh, wise guy? Would it just cease to exist? Would we just vanish into nothingness in a strange reverse of the way we were created all those million years ago, a single catastrophic bang casting us back from whence we came?

Or would a meteor hit? Like the movie Armageddon would we hang around watching the skies singing either Aerosmith’s “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” or “Que Sera Sera”, depending on whether you’re A) in the movie Armageddon or B) a Simpsons nerd.

Or would it just end for you. Would it be merely your life, nudged from this mortal existence. To be, to live, to breath no more.

Do I have an illness, spouter of this annoying statement? Must I spend this last day in a bed, attached to machines, or maybe wacked out of my mind on painkillers because to spend this last day sober would be too painful?

I have always felt that this statement should be changed to something more relevant. Something that doesn’t conjure so many questions in my mind and that doesn’t annoy me for merely existing.

My new version, which I must admit I did not make up, but because of the fact that I read so much on the Internets and listen to so many different podcasts, I cannot attribute to its coiner.

“Live your life as though it was a story you’d want to tell someone.”

This partly means that you should do things you'll remember, or at least want to remember. And you should realise that no matter how stupid, crazy or how much you don’t want to do a particular something, one day, when you have your own popular radio show/blog/dinner party, you can tell that story and people will think “Well gosh, that sounds cool, I wish I was there.” And if you can do things in your life that can make people think that then I think you succeeded.

And you don’t have to die tomorrow.