To ask for weird realisations you’ve had about life?

[goergia]

Things about mundane life that you’ve never given much thought but suddenly think “Now I think about it, that’s weird.”

I had one of these today. I live in a mid-terrace, neighbours are nice and quiet and we don’t hear a peep. A few days ago I had a snoop at one of the next-door neighbour’s house on Rightmove after seeing it was for sale, and realised that they have their bed right up against our party wall as I do mine. So even though I sleep in bed alone every night, there’s actually 2 people who I don’t really know just a couple of inches away from me! I don’t know why but for some reason it creeps me out. I’ve realised that in terraced houses you’re actually sharing one building with lots of people, many of whom you will NEVER interact with.

Sometimes my inner child pops up at weird times too. Halfway down the road I'll suddenly think 'I'm driving. I'm allowed to do this grown up thing!' And then I have to stop that train of thought before I convince myself that I'm an 8 year old and should never have been given this power and start freaking out!

@Tulipblacksmith

I’ve worked with sex offenders who aren’t allowed out without anyone assisting them due to the likelihood they would offend.

I always found that a surreal feeling. Walking around and everything just being perfectly normal. I dunno…. It’s just like walking around knowing a secret that all the other strangers around you don’t know. Especially when said sex offender starts nicely chatting to people.

Used to make me feel strange.

This about sex offenders also they are real people and you might find yourself laughing at their jokes. That you might find yourself liking elements of their personality despite them being a sex offender/peadophile. It's a surreal feeling.

I had a Facebook memory pop up the other day. I'd posted about going for a curry with my dad. My dad died on the same date the following year. It was his death day but we didn't know the year before so we were just ignorantly eating our curry and chatting away on April 7th because April 7th had no meaning back then.

That we are the universe made self-aware.

I should really be commenting on all the fascinating physics stuff, as a physics graduate, but I can't get my head around it all either. I still don't know how planes fly or how mobile phones can possibly work.

But all I can think of is how do cats find their way home (i.e. their new home) when their owner moves house? They don't get a map with the new route, or time to practice, they just do it. Also, rabbits. Our next door neighbour asked us to keep an eye on and feed their rabbits when they went on holiday last year. It was the first time they'd asked, having lived next door for ten years, and the rabbits had been there at least five years. Literally the minute we were in charge, the rabbits found their way into our garden, having never ever done this before, and then out through a gap in our fence onto the path that goes out of the estate. Why why why did they make this decision on that day????!!!! Thankfully they came back (equally mystifying how they did that) and we got them back into their cage and blocked the hole between our gardens which had been there for years and years and years........

I've just been out to the car and opened the boot and my son's coat was there. I have a child! In fact I have two. It's mad that I am 'mam' to these people.

What are thoughts, really?

And back to physics. How on earth have we, as nothing more than advanced monkeys, managed to work out so much about how the universe works. We're just tiny daft things on an insignificant planet, but we know so much about the insanely massive universe and its rules. But, how do the scientists and engineers know what machines they need to build to find out all this information? I've visited CERN a few times, and honestly cannot fathom where you start with building that. How do you know what is needed, what to make it from, which cable to join to something else? It is crazy.

When was the first human baby born? One day it must have been coming to the end of the previous species and the final baby was born, then the next day the first official human baby.

Oh and I still don't understand magnets.

I like wondering what things we perceive as perfectly normal are going to cause outrage or mirth in the future. People used to think you were a crap parent if you didn't give your kids 'a good hiding' if they were naughty, now it seems outrageous. Wonder what I'm doing currently that will have me seen as either an abuser or an idiot by future generations!

@MardyOldGoth

Sometimes my inner child pops up at weird times too. Halfway down the road I'll suddenly think 'I'm driving. I'm allowed to do this grown up thing!' And then I have to stop that train of thought before I convince myself that I'm an 8 year old and should never have been given this power and start freaking out!

This has just made me laugh. I regularly get the feeling when I'm driving my children, the fact I'm in charge of the vehicle and also in charge of looking after them, it's a weird sobering feeling 😂

Lately I’ve been thinking about people becoming smaller by way of genetic engineering, I actually think that many moons ago people were giants. Think of stone henge, the pyramids, Easter island etc…
I used to wonder how they built these things but now think it’s bloody obvious they were much bigger!!

So my belief now is that people are gonna become about 10 inches tall eventually.
Think gullivers travels and Jack and the beanstalk

Also the dinosaurs…

@Samarie123 an interesting perspective to solve overconsumption and over-population !

I'm mid-60s. I only realised about 10 years ago that the state spelled 'Arkansas' and the state pronounced 'Arkinsaw' were actually the same place.

@Blert Absolutely!!

@MardyOldGoth

I had a Facebook memory pop up the other day. I'd posted about going for a curry with my dad. My dad died on the same date the following year. It was his death day but we didn't know the year before so we were just ignorantly eating our curry and chatting away on April 7th because April 7th had no meaning back then.

I am so sorry for your loss MardyOldGoth.

In one way it's good that we don't always know our destiny or that of our loved ones. On the other hand, in retrospect, that is so sad

I often lie in bed at night thinking that most people in all the houses all around are lying in the dark unconscious at that moment. It's seems so weird. Sleeping in general i think about a lot and how weird it is, like we're giant computers powered down to recharge ourselves

@MardyOldGoth

How do I know if other people see colours the same as I do? We both know it as blue but for all I know they could be seeing it as what I call red. And down the rabbit hole I go!

I think that might be a common one, I've definitely wondered about this one too

I flew as cabin crew and would spend sometimes 9 /10hrs in the air at 35,000ft giving out drinks, food etc, walking up and down the cabin never thinking that there was literally only air underneath me!.....

I haven't rtft so apologies if this has been mentioned but I always marvel at the social conventions that keep everyone safe and the wheels of society running, and how easily, on a whim, they could be disrupted.

How we all walk around dressed, or drive between designated lines, or walk on pavements, or pay for things not just take them. If everyone suddenly decided one morning to do something radically differently, the world would be chaos!

A physical thing. I went to Egypt, to the pyramids, valley of the kings, Luxor, and looking up to the very tops of the columns and rooms and thinking, “that little bit up there, no one has touched that precise little bit of wall since the day it was painted thousands of years ago”

That roughly equal numbers of girls and boys are born. It seems like it would be more random than that and maybe even out over longer periods of time. Maybe it does, I'm not sure.

That the moon and sun are so vastly different in size and in distance from us, but both appear to us from earth to be exactly the same size.

This is not so much about life, as about me and my family. My two older siblings were born in what as called Southern Rhodesia, and we'd have lots of old photos, wonderful stories, etc. relating to that time before we moved to England in the 1977 (along with many others).

In my 20s and 30s when I became more interested in family history, and socially aware, I did make much more aware of colonization and the unspoken events of the past. I know my Dad and uncle were involved in fighting there, but it was never ever spoken about.

As a result it always makes me wonder about hidden histories and backgrounds of people. The Russian invasion of Ukraine brings all this to mind for me again. Will the Russians tell those stories to their families when they eventually go home?

I spent all of my childhood and teen years being told I look really English. Now Inlive in a different part of the country and am an adult, I look foreign. All of my boring features, like brown hair and brown eyes aren't English enough cheers politicians for that referendum

I think it would be stunning, if you could have bits of your played back to you ..like, "This was you in 1992 in London, see that person you've held the door open for in M&S? they have drugged and murdered 6 people, but today they have come to buy a new jumper. Theyhave just said thank you , and you have said 'no problem' "
@GhostofMaudFlanders
I think of things like that all the time.
Really freaks me out.
There for the grace of God and all that

@Aspiringmatriarch

That roughly equal numbers of girls and boys are born. It seems like it would be more random than that and maybe even out over longer periods of time. Maybe it does, I'm not sure.

That the moon and sun are so vastly different in size and in distance from us, but both appear to us from earth to be exactly the same size.

I never thought about that before but yeah it is odd how even the sexes are in terms on numbers, it must be some kind of survival balance or something hhmmmm

That the whole of this country depends on consumer goods made in Chinese slave factories. This means that the true value of the good is never paid, yet people still winge about prices. The people in this country are living in a dream world.

@Chaoslatte I sometimes wonder similarly, if everything disappeared and humanity had no memory of governments, financial systems, organisations etc how quickly we would recreate things exactly as they are.

Thank you @Calafsidentity!

I'm definitely glad we don't know, because my aunt died on my 40th birthday so if I'd known in advance I never would have enjoyed a single birthday. It is weird though that every year we wander around on what will be our death date without knowing it.