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.

kennycat

That we are all totally the same”

Sorry, disagree with this. 59 years have shown me that we’re really not. Nothing to do with nationality. Some people are good and some are just awful.

@Youarelreadyenough

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 😂

Especially the prime minister .

@Onlyabean I used to marvel at this when my daughter would learn the word ‘rabbit’ from a cartoon rabbit in a book, and from that recognise a ‘real’ rabbit at a petting farm!

That an IVF baby just sits... frozen... in time? Like they're made then can be born years later. Blows my mind.

That most people are just out for themselves

I remember when I was about 12 or 13 discussing with my best friend how our 'husbands' (it was the 1970s) were alive somewhere completely unaware that we existed as we were unaware of them. That one day we would meet & discuss the conversation my friend & I were having.

We moved away after leaving school & lost contact. At a school reunion about 20 years later we went over this conversation. We both did get married & did indeed find out what our husbands had been doing at the time.

I hope that all makes sense!

I literally can’t believe what you’ve just said!!!! I honestly thought I was the only one who had this thought!!!!! As you say- how can something, the universe, go on forever? It has to come to an end at some point. But then there would have to be a wall but as you say, what is behind the wall if you knocked it down?!?!?! I try to convey how I feel to my family on a reasonably regular basis but I can see from their faces that they just aren’t getting the enormity of what I’m saying. It’s so nice to ‘meet’ someone who knows exactly what I mean!!!

@fluffythedragonslayer

A bit like the "grown ups won't save us" one, as a child I used to be really scared of "going mad" but would tell myself that if I felt it happening I'd tell a doctor and they'd help, so it would be fine. The realisation that this is not true, for many reasons, was horrible - stretched mental health services, HCPs who don't care, the very fact that "going mad" (my childhood phrase, not wishing to be offensive) can actually mean seeking help is frightening and difficult, and that help doesn't always, well, help... It's been a shitty revelation to me. I often think back to little me telling myself it would be fine, someone will help, and it makes me kinda sad.

Don't worry @fluffythedragonslayer as someone who has "gone mad" and been sectioned several times over my life there is lots of help and your friends and family that are true friends and worthwhile family come and help. It's a good way of realising that most people want to help.

A teacher once asked us to think about what is at the end of the universe in yr 10.
I did.
I was a gibbering wreck for ages because no-one else seemed to care that there cannot be anything there but there has to be something there and we live inside it. How can we not know. AAARGH

My great-great grandparents had a camera and they obviously liked taking pictures, because we have lots of photos of them and my great-grandmother, her sisters and eventually my grandfather as a small child. Photos of them on holiday, eating lunch, just hanging about outside their home. There are so many in informal settings that you actually get a sense out the different personalities. I find it strange that there is this whole family of people who I don't know and never will, but they are related to me and just outside of my living memory.

That we don't really understand most things. E.g. what is electricity exactly? What is magnetism? What is gravity?

In a variation on Sonder…. I sometimes look at strangers in the street and think about all the work that went into them…how someone took that person by the hand every day for years and led him to school , or how someone scraped baby food off her toddler chin day after day .

That we putvso much time, energy, effort, love, hate, feelings, hope, and so much more into our daily lives but then, poof!...100 years down the line we'll be very lucky if our descendants know anything meaningful about us at all.

In 2 generations time no one will probably remember you

That you keep growing up till the day you die. Or you should.

How stunningly unproductive most low-paid UK jobs are. And how dim most bosses in low-paid British industries. It ain’t like that everywhere else. Really.

Isaac Newton invented the cat flap.

That fairytales do not exist.
That you will never find a soulmate because they don't exist.
People you have relationships with are just other ordinary people and you are very lucky if you get a good one.

There are so many do gooders. That make it out they’re doing good for others but it’s so obvious they’re doing it to make themselves feel good.

That if you died alone with a cat, or at least a dog, they would eventually start eating you.

Here's one, and bloody depressing:

Take your present age from, say, 85 to be on the generous side. So if you're 30, you have 55 years left, which sounds a lot.

Turn those years into months: 660 and suddenly it feels like nothing. I think it's because we can easily imagine a month, whereas a year is just a bit big.

Sorry for the buzzkill.

@fluffythedragonslayer I have bipolar and am/was in the psychiatric system for years. There were some crap people/teams, but by and large I was treated fairly well. It's definitely worth seeking help if you're ever ill. And you can always change consulting teams if you're not happy. You just have to keep pushing. I prioritized getting other help for myself, too.

That I am now "one of those old women" that I used to feel sorry for, living alone except for a cat. I had no clue what a SWEET DEAL is actually is!

We all have photographs from holidays, days out and just general life which also capture total strangers. I look at my photos fondly and have no idea who the strangers in the background are yet they’ll remain in a treasured photograph of mine forever. Likewise I’ll be in a total strangers photographs all over the world possibly printed out and displayed in frames to be looked at everyday - mind boggling

It took until I was 43 to actually comprehend that America and Russia are basically next to each other.
We only ever look at a map of the world online or in an atlas with America on the left, Africa middle and Russia on the right/top.
Didn’t even think that as we are an actual globe, they would be next to each other….I literally had to sit down, and I think I’m a fairly intelligent person! (Or maybe not!!!)

That horses can’t be sick.

I have horses later in life (never as a child) and it wasn’t until I did a British Horse Society training course that I learned about this. Now I’m paranoid when my young horse tries to eat my bobble off my hats (he’s obsessed with faux fur!).

@SolarPortrait

Being in the background in photographs. You take a photo, a random snapshot in time, on a beach or in a restaurant and there are people in the background unaware that they have been captured in time in that moment forever. How many photographs am I unwittingly in the background of.

This! I live in a tourist area and often wonder how many photos I'm in!

I've realised the pointlessness of so much of what we do. Covid really brought that into focus for me work wise as lots of the tasks we do didn't get done during the pandemic and nothing changed. The inefficiency and pointless bureaucracy in public services and companies all around the world is just astounding. Cumulatively hundreds of years of peoples lives wasted on inefficient processes and pointless crap. I think if we got rid of all of this shit everyone would have so much more time to enjoy life!

This is one of my all time favourite threads, loving the responses :)