I’ve been standing in my lounge now for nearly an hour. You ever done that? Just stood there. Doing nothing.
I got home from work. Came in. And just stood there. I wasn’t thinking about anything. Or, maybe I was feeling something. Ideas are hard to explain. You don’t think in words, or maybe you do (who can really know the minds of others), thoughts just are. You have them. You don’t word them out.
The trick to solving the riddle of life is explaining a truth that you feel but don’t own. I wasn’t in a state of meditation I was in a state of loss. It’s wrong, you know, the way we do things. We have created elaborate social structures that most of us are unhappy with but, as a whole, we strive to maintain. None of it makes any sense.
Do you ever find yourself in a shop looking at an ornament that is designed only for you to purchase and then put in your house? A purposeless thing that might be cheap or might be a serious consideration financially. You think one of two things. One: this would look good in my house. And two: this doesn’t fit with my colour scheme. Do you ever hold that thing and just look at it. Just look at this decoration and feel the absurdity of modern life collapse around you?
Reality begins to break and before you know it you’re walking down the street, your car left unlocked somewhere behind you, just wondering why the fuck everyone is trying so hard to maintain this odd living situation we’ve all made for ourselves.
I’m the worst. For someone struggling with the idea of a fabricated and mostly aesthetic society, I spend my days as a delivery man, going out of my way to help people fill their homes with pointless shit. And I get paid to do it so I can buy shit that someone else gets paid to deliver to me, so he can buy shit to be delivered to him. I work six days a week doing this. How about we all stop buying crap we don’t need so I can have a fucking day off?
Just one day. Nobody buys a thing. All the delivery drivers will get a day to see their families. All the things that weren’t bought that day won’t need to be made, and all those people can take the day. How about we all take a day off at the same time. Everything will be closed because everyone will be off. And let’s all just chill out for a day. Let’s see, as a species, together, what it’s like when everyone stops for a moment. No road works, nobody reading the news, the radio is tuned to static, the fire stations are unmanned, submarines have risen to the surface, scientists have powered down the telescopes, cows are going un-milked.
“That’s a good idea, I can finally get around to cleaning my car.”
No. No work. Leave your car be. No decorating the lounge, no mowing the lawn, no day to finally get your accounts together. The pubs are shut, you can’t even go for a beer. It’s just you and the people around you. We can cook and we can drink what we have. If you run out of anything? Ask a neighbour. They’ll be happy to share this unusual day with you.
I bet it will be a day remembered as one of the strangest, hectic, interesting and happiest days in all of history. If we let it carry on for a week, or a month, or longer, the riots would cease and the community will naturally grow to a more humane balance between work and pleasure.
On that day, when humans are just being human, with no Instagram or fashion shows, try and see life move with its façade removed. See the cogs. The meaning of life is just behind them.
Andrew Chapman / Author and Screenwriter 