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.

TaraRhu

I am amazed that at the tip people throw a ceramic sink or a glass cabinet into a skip from a height until its broken when someone in need would be crying out for that object and all the time and making of said object. That food just gets thrown or to rot yet people are going hungry it just confuses me the logic of it especially that in supermarkets meat and fish get thrown away. That we overproduce to throw away what were living beings and that we would rather have volume versus better standards and that this is just generally accepted as the norm that there will be waste in order to have more choice.

Sliding doors / butterfly effect fascinates me. My aunt and uncle only got married because he was in the navy and stopped at the port where she lived. At their wedding my mum and dad met. My dad very nearly didn’t go as the wedding was in Devon and he had to hitch hike most of the way (from the Lake District). It all could have been so different and this counts for all seemingly meaningless decisions you make.

I also have a morbid fascination about What happens when we die and wonder if reincarnation is real. Like when little kids come out with strange comments they couldn’t know or claim to have past lives. Or near death experiences ….what are they?!

It also always blows my mind that we are limited to the reality we can perceive by our senses. There are whole spectrums of sound and light we can’t access. What are we missing?

The realisation that I will never see my mother again.
I get so sad at this thought and at the same time so angry.
I just find it so difficult to accept that, that's it. Gone, no longer exists, no longer here.
It's made me realise that there is nothing after death and I now struggle with everything that was instilled in me growing up.
Why was I made to believe in something that doesn't exist!

The time thing is just a concept.
To make life easier we agree on a standardised way of measuring it. Like how a yard came to mean so many inches. A mile was a thousand Roman strides and then became a set measurement.
What baffles me is why humans start menstruating so early. Nobody wants to have a child aged 11 so when will biology catch up and ensure girls don't start their periods until later in life?
Will it take a hundred thousand years.
I also think the way humans give birth is barbaric, nothing natural about it at all. I can't think of any other mammal which goes through as much pain as humans do giving birth.
The only credible explanation is the one I heard professor Robert Winston give and that started my change in attitude to religion. After I heard his explanation that humans should not be giving birth to live young and that we originated as fish and laid eggs, I could never again align my religious beliefs and became an atheist.
It may be the biggest fundamental occurance in my life.
It also made me query why we are here, who are we, what purpose do we serve? I can't find any answers. What is the meaning of life. I've looked into it and nobody has given me a credible answer. We appear to be a malformed alien species. We can't possibly have began life as the form we take now, why is childbirth so disfunctional. Without modern medicine we would die in childbirth (as indeed many women did) I would have died for sure.
The only explanation is that we began life as something else, most likely fish. It's too mind blowing. Yet our reproduction is not in line it's completely out of sink.

@UniversalAunt

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

Oh god yes! I only realised this a year or so ago when a Facebook post was getting trolled by an MRA who I later discovered has links to the far right, mens rights (anti feminist) movements and was working with groups who want to remove funding for domestic abuse shelters.

It later transpired she’s on her way to getting a PHD ‘proving’ women are more violent and abusive than men. She’ll be a ‘Dr’ soon. I looked at her research and peers and it’s all cherry picked, misrepresented other academics etc etc and discovered it’s all being funded by specific anti women interest groups.

(It’s my line of academic study I’m not a stalker btw) It shook my faith in ‘academia’ and how little of it is really ‘good faith’ honest, objective and truthful. And then I questioned everything we think of as ‘truth’. Its made me less enthusiastic about my own area of study now.

@OneOfTheGrundys

All the stuff we eat now someone once tried to see if it was ok to eat. Like. No one knew if apples were poisonous so they gave it a go and discovered they weren’t. (Minor but boggles my mind. 😬)

On the same lines, who first worked out that heating food up, or rather holding it over a fire or shoving it into the embers of a fire would make it taste better and be more digestible? Boggles my mind. I can only think that after ancient humans learned to control fire and had got used to having one around, one time someone dropped a bit of mammoth steak or whatever onto the fire and after all the yelling about waste of perfectly good raw meat, someone else said 'Hang on a minute, actually that smells really good' and some intrepid soul fished the meat out of the flames and tried it ... and the rest was history.

Late on, of course, but still thousands of years before our time, people learned how to make olives palatable. If you look at how many steps are involved in that, it's mindboggling. How did they work all that out? Similarly, there's a lot of processing involved in using maize to avoid some health issue, which has also been happening for millennia in the Americas.

If it had all been left to me, the most risk-averse person on the planet, we'd still be an insignificant ape species swinging about in the trees in East Africa.

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
I am a teacher a d it is funny how of you ever reveal a snippet of your life they are totally fascinated. They also remember it snd you hear it back from children you have never taught before. And they try to piece it together 😀. Ihave given out the off piece of trivial misinformation occasionally just to confuse the narrative 😀

@Gardeningcreature

The time thing is just a concept. To make life easier we agree on a standardised way of measuring it. Like how a yard came to mean so many inches. A mile was a thousand Roman strides and then became a set measurement. What baffles me is why humans start menstruating so early. Nobody wants to have a child aged 11 so when will biology catch up and ensure girls don't start their periods until later in life? Will it take a hundred thousand years. I also think the way humans give birth is barbaric, nothing natural about it at all. I can't think of any other mammal which goes through as much pain as humans do giving birth. The only credible explanation is the one I heard professor Robert Winston give and that started my change in attitude to religion. After I heard his explanation that humans should not be giving birth to live young and that we originated as fish and laid eggs, I could never again align my religious beliefs and became an atheist. It may be the biggest fundamental occurance in my life. It also made me query why we are here, who are we, what purpose do we serve? I can't find any answers. What is the meaning of life. I've looked into it and nobody has given me a credible answer. We appear to be a malformed alien species. We can't possibly have began life as the form we take now, why is childbirth so disfunctional. Without modern medicine we would die in childbirth (as indeed many women did) I would have died for sure. The only explanation is that we began life as something else, most likely fish. It's too mind blowing. Yet our reproduction is not in line it's completely out of sink.

That’s very interesting and explains a lot. I find it extraordinary that people still believe in a ‘perfect’ creator. The world is, and always has been, so messed up that it makes far more sense that there isn’t a creator than there is one and I can’t get my head around the fact that people believe the opposite.

I once went to Herculaneum which is near Pompeii an similarly excavates having been buried in lava when Mount Vesuvius erupted. But the moder town of Ercolano eas built over most of it so it can my be partly excavated snd much remains below thise newer buildings. It is so fascinating-made me want to but a ground floor flat and dig down through the floor😀Amd Iwondered of a time had done that or of a multimillionaire like ElonnMusk etc could be persuaded to but up those homes secretly till they were all bought and could be demolished and excavated.

Mine is that at some point you did something for the last time and didn't realise it.

Like going out to play with your friends after school.

Rode a bike like Elliott from ET

Used dial up

Gave someone a hug - a school friend , someone who's died...

Would we be more conscious of these moments if we knew they were the last time. Does that make sense?!

The stardust thing...
Once upon a time everything was created in the big bang, energy became stuff... the whole universe, everything in it has come from that moment.

The stars were made, the stars made us... just about every atom of our being was created in the stars, every atom of our being will exist after we are long gone.

The continuity calms me when I think of death.

@ThursdayAddams

That’s a really good one. It’s poignant but another part of me wishes I hadn’t read that because it’s kind of sad.

Just thought of another thing.
Every living creature that requires water to survive, since the beginning of time, has had water. There is a finite supply of the stuff that is suitable for drinking.
Have you ever thought about how many creatures/humans has our water has been through before you drink it? I realise it will have gone through a sanitation process before I will drink it but every living creature has either bathed in it or drunk water before you.
The water cycle if you will.

Also, how having sex is very similar throughout the species and how it could be a nature programme with narration by David Attenborough if you think about it "The male of the species mounts the female....and so on"

@JangolinaPitt I'm married to a teacher and we live quite close to where my husband works so we quite often bump into the kids he teaches. The level of fascination that he appears to do normal things and seems to have a wife (they once asked if I was his wife, I said I didn't know him 🤣) and kids, mind blown. A year 7 actually thought he lived at the school, I've no idea how an 11 year old could actually think that! He can quite often walk right past them and they don't recognise him in jeans and a t-shirt though, out of context and not in a suit they just don't notice.

Great thread. Mine are numerous, but some include:
The ingeniousness of humans is insane - cathedrals, airplanes, nuclear power, orchestral music - how can we make such complex varied things?
And this contrasted with the complexity and beauty of nature, which we have not made or designed...blows the mind.
I often wonder what would happen if we suddenly just didn't have people with the skills or willingness to keep systems running like healthcare or nuclear power or farming essential foods? Where is the guarantee of all this stuff?
I sometimes think about my childhood home and the clothes and furniture and toys I had and think, does that stuff exist anywhere now (35 years later) is it at the bottom of landfill somewhere or totally degraded, all these things I wore or played with as a child.
And what will be on this site where I am now in 500 or 1000 years time? Will this house still be here ? Probably not.
If you look at your pets and wonder how they feel about you as a human that they co exist with, that's quite strange also.
The world and existence is so weird.

18 years ago when my son came along I stopped working full time and started going for walks during the day in my local area. I often would see twin girls out walking their dogs. They were quite distinctive looking, blonde, slim with glasses and they dressed in the same clothes. 18 years ago they looked like they were in their late teens, early 20s.
I still see them and they haven't changed a bit even though they must be approaching their 40s now.
There is also another lady I have been seeing while out walking for years. She's also quite distinctive as she has a limp but walks really fast.
Anyway. Whenever I see either of these people I wonder if there is anyone in my area who keeps seeing me and thinks I'm distinctive looking. It also makes me wonder how many people there are who I regularly see but don't remember. I bet if I paid more attention if see the same people around all the time. My point is that, particularly in the local area our paths probably cross with the same people all the time but we don't notice it.

This one is hard to explain, but now and again I realise I'm nothing but a brain, an inner voice and the rest of me is fairly superficial almost like a programmed droid. This thread has actually set me off thinking about it again and oh gosh it's deep!

Going to Rome blew my mind too. Obviously I know about Ancient Rome but to be able to walk in bits of it and see it so much still intact and then think about how old it is and that you're walking or sitting in a place that was once part of a historical daily life, and my Italian DH could be related to one of them. My next stop is Pompeii, I think I only properly appreciate history when I can see and touch it.

As mentioned here already, reincarnation, it completely fascinates me, the things those children say give me goosebumps!

@Firebird83

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 think millions of people are bothered about it. Nearly everyone I know moans about it. There are films, books and TV shows devoted to what a mundane trap it all is!

I also ponder on the size of the universe and where does it end. Can’t comprehend infinity. Why I am me and why did I get to be born into a happy family and be loved and cared for rather than others less fortunate.

Also, like others have said, have always felt things will always be ok as people in charge will sort things out but the past 2 years felt that was no longer the case.

I wonder how Earth and life on it will end. Will it be sudden or will it peter out over time.

When someone dies and never seeing that person again. What happens to their soul ? Does it just go or is it just not in a body but in particles surrounding us.

So many things! I love this thread.

@Jackburger

I think are brains/senses are too small to comprehend infinity but it’s great to ponder on.

*our rather

The realisation that so many people around us are stupid. I know this makes me sounds horrible but I assure you I treat everyone with the same respect. But I am educated to a high level and find it so difficult to find people to have a good conversation with. Most people talk abou trivial subjects that bore me beyond belief.

When 49.5% of the population of the planet is female, (this is not a post about identifying as female or not), why does the other 50.5% of the population think they know what's best for us?

Why do they get to decide what we do with our bodies?

Why do they get to decide for us?

Why have there been so few (in comparison) female leaders, even through history??

I find the teacher one funny too.
I remember dd once going to town with her friends. She caught the train and afterwards told me how she had seen Miss X and Miss Y on the train sat together. It appears she had spent the entire journey ( only 10 mins to be fair) either watching them or going up and talking to them. Asking where they were going etc 😬😬😬😬😬😬. I think her and her friends even followed them off the train fascinated that 2 teachers existed outside of school. Dd was in secondary school at the time.
Another time I have her friend a lift home. Her friend suddenly started pointing at a house shouting Mr X (a teacher) lives in that house! Yes he lives there, there in that house! She was 14. Hillarious.

Another one is how the vast majority of what we think, especially about other people, is assumptions we've made ourselves and often (mostly, even?) are completely wrong.

"Brenda rolled her eyes work when I spoke at the meeting. She clearly thinks my report is crap".

This leads to a whole narrative about Brenda that I totally made up because I made an assumption about what she thinks despite having no idea what Brenda actually thinks. Is she after my job, does she think I'm a slacker, is she just an ignorant cow? Or did she roll her eyes at a male colleague who made a face at me that I didn't see, so the opposite of what I now think about her is true?

When you notice this it's quite mind blowing because everyone makes assumptions about what people are thinking and why they are behaving a certain way despite having no idea whether this is true. Scarily, it affects how we are in our relationships with each other and the decisions we make. Once you clock yourself doing this, and remind yourself you're essentially making up your own version of events, it's life changing!