Charlie enjoyed life as a fly. Compared to being a wasp or a
bee, it was pretty great. However his
existence was called into question three seconds before his untimely death,
If your thoughts of who and what you are all live in the past
(Charlie mused) and the past isn’t ‘here’ – then what are your thoughts for?
Why does your mind automatically revert to the past? Where are the pictures
held and how do they come to the fore? Wouldn’t it be better to think of nothing
rather than something random like a horse or a tree? Can you do that – think of
nothing at all? Is that death, or do we become thought when we die?
Bad time to question these things, Charlie thought.
If we are thinking past thoughts and the past doesn’t exist
are we, in fact, thinking about nothing - something that doesn’t exist, i.e.
nothing? And if the past is nothing, why does it continue to have a hold over
us? Is it because we look to the future which also doesn’t exist? Spending our
time thinking about how something that doesn’t exist influences something else that
doesn’t exist seemed like an awful waste of time to Charlie. The only thing
that does exist is this very moment even though that’s now in the past and so,
doesn’t exist.
Charlie wished he’d thought of this before. Before he
slammed into the windscreen of a Ford Focus 1.6 travelling on the M1 north of
Dundalk.
Still...he tried to make the most of the moment. Before it was gone.