The 2084 Precept Read online

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  And in any case, as I was saying, it was just one of those ordinary days.

  You know what I mean, you get up, you shave—if you are a man, that is—you paint yourself with various chemicals and so on if you are a woman, maybe also do a bit of shaving here and there, you go to work, you have coffee breaks, you have lunch, you go home, or you go to a bar or a restaurant or maybe to the movies or, if you are one of those kinds of people, to an art show or a museum, or maybe you just stay at home, maybe you read a book or, if you are one of those kinds of people, you watch T.V. Then you go to bed, and if you are lucky enough to still be at a decent stage of a relationship, maybe you have sex. And if you are really still into it, then maybe even before you go to bed. Or maybe you don't.

  And maybe you take a bit of time while all of this is going on to send some daily prayers in a vertically upwards direction. Or—with bowed head or kneeling or both—vertically downwards. Or perhaps in an easterly direction. Or, feel free, in whichever direction you prefer. Or maybe you don't. Whatever.

  And then you get up the next day and you do those same things all over again, more or less anyway. Life is what we call it. Others of course do different things such as being full-time caretakers of offspring—these caretakers being mainly female, although these days you never know—and this is the driving force in their lives, the main reason for their existence. Or so I am told and so they say.

  Sociologists have estimated that the average adult in the developed world—ignoring for the moment what we mean by 'developed'—spends at least 16,000 days of his or her life in this way. That is a large whack out of anyone's life, considering that the adult lifespan of an average 'developed' human on this planet is approximately 22,000 days (out of a total span of around 30,000). How accurate this estimate is I have no idea, nor, what's more, do I care. And in any case, we are all unconscious for the equivalent of 10,000 of those 30,000 days. Sleep, we call it.

  So, there we are, such is life, an existence of limited duration—extremely limited if you ask me—and exorbitantly limited for those who have had bad luck, or for whom bad luck awaits in the future. Time, in fact—if you think about it—is the only thing we really possess. And this, to a large extent, is what we do with it. We don't know why we do it, we just do it. It's the way things are, it's the way it is, there is no point in analyzing the matter.

  And as for the meaning of it all, the purpose of it all, what is that supposed to signify? A laughable question for someone such as myself, who would simply reply that there is no meaning at all and there is no purpose either. But if we wish to be fair, and we do, I fully respect all other opinions including the one that the main reason is to have babies, spend tortuous, messy and stinky years of the limited number available trying to turn them into creatures identical or at least similar to yourself, sometimes failing and finding that you have produced a murderer or a rapist or a child molester or whatever, and more often than not - a statistical fact - at the same time going through hellish relationships, with or without a divorce or other forms of unpleasantness, in order to eventually…well, eventually what?

  In order to eventually disappear, hop off, expire, kick the bucket, bite the bullet, perish, cease existing, vanish (I offend no religions here, I refer to vanishing from this planet).

  And the foremost objective of all of this, or so I am told, is for the offspring to go off and do exactly the same thing in order also to vanish. Or whatever your preferred expression is – possibly a more cultivated one: decease perhaps, or pass away or pass on. And this vanishing is a theme all on its own. It can occur in prolonged pain, diabolical suffering, agony, torment and misery or—if you are lucky—it can occur abruptly and usually without prolonged agony as in traffic accidents, heart attacks and terrorist bombs. Or you get murdered. Or—if you really mess things up in the wrong way, at the wrong time and in the wrong place—it could occur in an electric chair. For example.

  But according to those who claim to be in the know, there is indeed a purpose behind this convoluted and ongoing biological recycling exercise. They do not, however, say what it is—and going to a church is not going to enlighten you either. A church, according to my friend Steve, is merely a place where peculiarly robed persons who have never been to heaven stand up and boast about it to people who will never get there.

  But, be all of that as it may, and without fear of repeating myself—joke—it was just one of those ordinary days.