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.

‘ I slowly came to the horrible realisation that some people, even serious academics in eminent institutions, will bend the facts, cherry pick the info and misquote what is said just to further their own argument or political beliefs.’

Also to secure research grants & funding, in effect to keep themselves in a job.

Sonder: the realization that the people around us lead lives that are just as complicated, and as meaningful as ours or, more crudely, that they carry on existing even when we can't see them. I thought I wasn't subject to this illusion, but once I picked up my landline phone and heard two women in a conversation. I was astonished to think - here are two women, totally unknown to me, having a conversation with each other that would normally be hidden from me. Somehow the fact that they were speaking English in much the same way as me added to my (completely irrational) surprise. So I can be 'Sondered' after all.

After a recent accident/surgery, I tried to look up how general anaesthetic works. Obviously I know it "switches off" consciousness in a reversible way, but I'd often wondered how it does it

Turns out that the experts don't yet know either, which frankly was no comfort at all

A controversial (but topical one) is that billions of people around the world believe that 2000 years ago someone died and then came back to life and walked around and talked to people. Even though there's no actual evidence that it happened and they are only basing their belief on what they've been told and the fact that some other people wrote down that it happened. I always think that if it happened today people would think the story is obviously ridiculous and impossible, no matter how many 'proofs' there were that it was true (i.e. lots of people witnessing it), but because it happened a long time ago, people believe it.

@ToryWantsBorisOut

A controversial (but topical one) is that billions of people around the world believe that 2000 years ago someone died and then came back to life and walked around and talked to people. Even though there's no actual evidence that it happened and they are only basing their belief on what they've been told and the fact that some other people wrote down that it happened. I always think that if it happened today people would think the story is obviously ridiculous and impossible, no matter how many 'proofs' there were that it was true (i.e. lots of people witnessing it), but because it happened a long time ago, people believe it.

I find this quite disrespectful on Good Friday. You could say that about any religion but it’s always Christianity that takes the flack.

@Puzzledandpissedoff

I watched a fictional (obviously) movie where a solar magnetic flare hit earth and it messed up the body chemistry of all living things. Suddenly nobody could sleep, you literally couldn’t sleep. Everybody went mad and everybody died. People woke up from comas. The only way to survive was to die and be resuscitated as that ‘reset’ you. It’s stuck with me.

That everybody has sex! That little old man and his wife that run the little shop down the road, the doctor, the prime minister, my boss. They all like getting jiggy! A very immature realisation but one that throws me quite a lot 😂

There are some epic realisations here!!! I realised a few years ago that most of the stuff I wondered about/ discounted/ pitied, I have done in my 30s and now my 40s. Have said most of the stuff my mother/mil used to say, I now wear make up daily, take vitamins and stomach tablets, have sore knees and chest issues so have to ask for help lifting heavy stuff, enjoying hearing about tarot cards, have tried yoga, like wine, life for tea, now have a gut and amn't nearly as fit, am ready to sleep at 9, like cats and dont want a dog, am no longer a morning person... it's mind blowing!!

@ToryWantsBorisOut

A controversial (but topical one) is that billions of people around the world believe that 2000 years ago someone died and then came back to life and walked around and talked to people. Even though there's no actual evidence that it happened and they are only basing their belief on what they've been told and the fact that some other people wrote down that it happened. I always think that if it happened today people would think the story is obviously ridiculous and impossible, no matter how many 'proofs' there were that it was true (i.e. lots of people witnessing it), but because it happened a long time ago, people believe it.

It started a long time ago when people thought such things could be possible. Then the story became the basis of whole social structures and authorities, such that it became very difficult to dismantle them. We haven't succeeded yet (eg we still have bishops in the house of lords, people feel they need a church wedding even if not religious, etc.).

I have always thought there was behind the scenes in government a highly professional and deeply knowing class of permanent civil servants that really ran the country and smiled sweetly at the ideas brought up in parliament and tweaked the rules to appear to show parliament made a difference but sorted everything out.

Parliament being a pretence that we are a democracy

In the last few years I am not so sure...allowing a drinks party at Number 10 - surely someone from the class of permanent civil servants should have said, "this is not a good idea" particularly as everyone has a mobile phone capable of taking HD quality pictures

@Organictangerine But why is it disrespectful? Nothing I've said it untrue, and I find it really odd. Christianity is the religion I was brought up in and know most about. It's like when my A-level RE teacher casually said "of course, Son of God was just used in Hebrew as a figure of speech to describe a very holy man, and Christ's contemporaries never literally considered him the son of God, nor did Christ ever claim to be anything other than a prophet."

Maps and atlas’s. Even before the days of the internet, people made up road maps and A- Zs. How did they do it with little technology? Was it all done by people literally walking around and making sketches?

And the internet. Just amazes me. You can hit a website address and the world and it’s entire history is at your fingertips. Genius’s.

For me it's the fact of being a child I thought police officers, fire & rescuers, doctors & nurses, politicians & so on were all sort super humans but then I grew up an realised they're all just children that grew up too.
They just worked hard to be where they are and the mistakes they make are the same as the rest of ours but because of the path they chose their mistakes have heavier consequences.

I also find it odd that the future is genuinely not written yet. Sometimes when world events happen I think "oh I wonder how this is going to end" as if it's a TV programme or novel, and have to remind myself that no-one actually knows yet. And yet at other times I sort of know something is going to happen and have this sense of inevitability... (it's almost always bad things)

[quote ToryWantsBorisOut]@Organictangerine But why is it disrespectful? Nothing I've said it untrue, and I find it really odd. Christianity is the religion I was brought up in and know most about. It's like when my A-level RE teacher casually said "of course, Son of God was just used in Hebrew as a figure of speech to describe a very holy man, and Christ's contemporaries never literally considered him the son of God, nor did Christ ever claim to be anything other than a prophet."[/quote]
I just get tired of the semi-sneery tones people use when saying how wonderfully bright they are compared to all those ridiculous Christians who believe fairy stories. As I said nobody ever critiques other religions in similar tones, so it does grate. And it’s Good Friday, so couldn’t you really have saved it for another day?

That life is an endless loop of Monday-Sunday, and people don’t seem bothered by that. Just the same 7 days of the week over and over. Going to work and doing the same routines again and again.

I had a realisation the other day when my kids were asking me mummy did you ever meet your great grandparents? And then it dauned on me that actually theres so many generations before us like my grandparents parents and there parents...all people that were important to someone else once upon a time and as time goes by then know one remembers them because they to have passed and then one day we will also be that someone and actually how insignificant our life really is and one day we to will just be nobodys that once existed.

Oh another realisation (well, more a question) that popped into my head the other day is, why do we call our parents mum/dad? Rather than just their names?

In the first lockdown it struck me that civilisation is a massive construct. Why are we all scurrying around working? What are we working for? Who says I have to pay someone an extortionate amount of money for a house on a piece of land? Who 'gave' them the land in the first place? It all seemed so pointless.

Fate - by the myth of sliding doors your life could be totally different.

Dancing - why do we do it? Why are we happy to be so carefree and really show ourselves to people we don't know?

Hotel beds - we happily sleep on beds that many many others have slept on....

Odd that you can be extremely intimate with someone and when you break up you still have to look them
In the eye.

That people don't react or do things the way I would.

Lots of these once you start thinking.

Great thread!

@Onlyabean

I don’t understand how toddlers can look at a dog and know that it is a dog, because a pug does not look like a Dalmatian or a corgi etc. How does a child know that each one of them is a dog, when some look more like a sheep?

At uni my law lecturer was talking about the difference between a legal mind and a normal mind. She explained that someone with a legal mind will say to a child "But this Great Dane is a dog the same as your Dachshund is a dog so why are you scared?". I didn't get it so I guess I don't have a legal mind.

We all think we see things the same way and think the same way, but we don't. At all.

That we are all totally the same. If you watch, say, the news on mute, all the people could be anywhere. The Ukrainians being displaced are actual people with houses like ours. They aren’t poor shanty town people but people who lived just like us. They had grass in their gardens and pasta in their kitchens just like us. Same for anyone else in the news really. They all take the piss out of their daily family members and have tummy ache occasionally like we do. We are all just people. Ordinary people. Even Kate Middleton who I adore and worship!!

@MuchTooTired

A weird one I realised the other day is that people I see whilst out and about have whole actual lives. There’s a woman I see on the school run, every school day I drive past her in the morning, we smile at each other, then do the same in the afternoon. I saw her the other day in b&q and it completely threw me - it wasn’t a school day and she was there with her mum and blanked me.

Obviously I know everyone I see has a whole life just like I do, but it made me think about how many people there are, with lives that I know nothing about all over the world. I guess I’ve not matured past the kid in school who doesn’t realise the teacher doesn’t live there permanently until the next school day

My kids feel like this about thier teachers, if we see a teacher outside of school my kids act like the teachers can’t or don’t have lives out side of school.

After I had my first baby I remember walking round the shops in awe of all of the mothers tI saw. I just couldn’t believe that every single one of them had their own birth stories, sometimes multiple ones. And that every mother I saw loved their baby as much as I did mine. I was absolutely blown away by the realisation of just how much love there is in the world.

It’s cheesy and I’m not a sentimental person but it still makes me feel a bit emotional today.

About as mundane as they come... but are 'hangnails' bits of skin or bits of nail? Either way they are annoying and hurt if you pull them!

There are no grown ups.