Edging onwards with the Rasputin third draft and hope to get it finished in the next couple of days. I was battling a bit against the second day of hangover symptoms from Thursday night cocktails. I was lethargic and a bit blue and my cough was back. I might have to accept that I am too old for this kind of behaviour now.
I also spent quite a bit of the day thinking about death, which probably didn't help my depression. Though I was doing so for comedic purposes and am managing to see the positive aspects of kicking the bucket. Forgive me if I use my blog to knock about a few half-thought out ideas for the new show. They may not be that profound at the moment, but profundity might come with exploration.
The fact that our lives end does make them worth a whole lot more. If we lived forever then think how much I would procrastinate then. Even with this finite life I drag my feet a bit on script deadlines, but if I knew I had infinity to get everything done then I might not bother. And it also gives much more meaning and urgency to all our relationships. The investment and gamble made in falling in love is much heightened by the fact that if you make it work and come to depend on each other eventually one of you is going to disappear, leaving the other bereft. Yet without that jeopardy would we be as close and would love be as meaningful. Is the pleasure of love worth the pain? My father's parents were married for fifty years and when my grandmother died, my grandad was bereft. They had always been quite a straight-laced and stoic couple, not really expressing their emotions too openly. I remember being amazed when my grandad answered the door to us when we arrived for the funeral and he burst into tears. I was in my early twenties and clearly stupid, but I couldn't believe he was emoting so openly. It shook me because I had never seen it, but I suppose I should have been able to see that losing someone you've spent your whole life with and who you love is not something you're going to take in your stride. He remained pretty unhappy for the last five years of his life. So would it have been better if he had never fallen in love? Did the pleasure outweigh the pain? Isn't it the inevitability of loss that makes life and love so strong?
Also after even half an infinity (also infinity) of being with one person they'd probably start to get on your nerves. The fact that life has limits and this awful risk involved to it is all that binds us together. If your children were immortal then you'd let them get on with stuff and not worry about them falling down a massive hole or falling in front of a bus. The fact that we have to invest so much time and worry in keeping them safe and alive is what binds us to them so strongly. The grief we know we would feel makes us even more alert than we might have been. Of course this has the negative impact that occasionally our children will die and we'll get to feel the deepest of sorrow. Yet perversely without that risk we wouldn't care about them in the same way as we do.
Hopefully within time we can come to appreciate what we had with someone when they were alive, rather than wallow in their demise. Or we can choose to believe that the person isn't dead and they're up in Heaven waiting to see us again. And Heaven is a sweet enough panacea for those without the imagination to consider the dull Hell of eternity and the inevitable loss of love that would come with forever without jeopardy. I would much rather everyone I love was snuffed out (eventually) than they had to exist in those conditions. Especially if an afterlife came with the kind of truth and revelation that people seem to think it will. You get to Heaven to discover that your husband cheated on you with your sister for five years. And now you've got to spend eternity with them both. Even less important half-truths and lies would surely niggle away at all of our relationships.
Death is brutal and unfair and wrenching, but without it I don't think life would have much meaning. We need to appreciate each other while we're here, do our best to keep each other safe, but when one of us goes we can't let that destroy us too. My grandmother wouldn't have wanted my grandfather to have endured a half-decade of misery without her. And yet it's easier said than done to suggest he should have consoled himself with the time they had together rather than them being ripped apart. Or for him to have been philosophical enough to realise that without the possibility of death their life and love would have had none of meaning they did.
Yeah, OK. Might struggle to make this stuff funny then.
