Life Is Fucking Hilarious If You Pay Attention.

Every now and then I catch myself halfway through doing something completely normal and think:

What the fuck am I doing?

Not existentially.

Literally.

I'll suddenly become aware of myself from about three feet outside my own body and the whole situation falls apart.

I was on a video call recently having a completely serious conversation when it happened.

There I was. Alone in a room. Talking to six floating heads inside glowing rectangles.

One was frozen. Someone else had accidentally muted themselves. Another person was nodding with the intense concentration of someone who may or may not have been answering emails on a second screen.

And together, with extraordinary sincerity, we were deciding whether something should be slightly more green.

For about three seconds I couldn't concentrate. The entire premise was fucking hilarious.

Then somebody said my name and I had to become an adult again.

These little glitches happen to me all the time. Moments where something I've done a thousand times suddenly loses its label and I actually look at what we're doing.

Airports are particularly good for this.

Hundreds of humans arrive carrying small wheeled boxes containing carefully selected pieces of fabric. We queue to present tiny books proving which part of the planet we're officially associated with. Then we remove various belongings from our bodies because another human has requested it, put everything through a machine, buy a £9 sandwich, locate a numbered door and wait for permission to climb inside a giant metal tube.

The tube throws us through the sky at nearly the speed of sound.

And somehow the thing we're annoyed about is: Ugh. Gate change.

You have to admire us.

I've started loving these moments because they remind me of something I think we forget constantly:

Normal is just weird you've stopped noticing.

A birthday is normal. Until you actually look at it. Once a year, on the anniversary of being expelled from your mother's body, everyone you love gathers around a dessert. They set it on fire. They sing at you. You extinguish the fire using your breath while privately making a wish you're not allowed to tell anyone because apparently that would compromise the magic. Everyone claps. Cake is distributed. Nobody asks questions.

A gym is normal. Until you notice thirty adults repeatedly picking up heavy objects and putting them back exactly where they found them in the hope their bodies will respond by redesigning themselves.

Dating is fucking hilarious. Two people who may want to see each other naked later put on more attractive versions of their usual clothes, sit opposite one another and take turns asking questions to establish whether they find each other sufficiently interesting. Then they both go home and conduct separate forensic investigations with their friends.

"So?"

"I don't know."

"What did he say?"

"Well, he said—"

Extraordinary system.

And don't even get me started on kissing. Actually, let's leave kissing alone. Some things do not survive forensic description.

None of this is new. That's the point.

I think we stop noticing how strange life is because we've named everything.

Meeting. Airport. Wedding. Date. Career. Commute. Gym. Tuesday.

A label is incredibly efficient. Your brain doesn't need to inspect gym every time you enter one. It already knows the file.

But efficiency comes with a weird little tax. Once we know what something is called, we become much less interested in what it actually is.

A wedding? Know it. A sunset? Seen one. A Tuesday? Unfortunately familiar.

The label compresses the experience.

And I wonder whether this is one of the quieter ways life starts feeling smaller as we get older. Not because the world has become less interesting. Because we've become too fluent in it.

Children don't have this problem yet. Give a child a cardboard box and you've apparently just purchased them a spaceship, restaurant, fortress and private residence. Give an adult a cardboard box and it's recycling.

We've become very impressive. We know what things are for.

I think this is partly why people can have enormous, colourful, objectively ridiculous lives and still occasionally feel bored.

We're experiencing them in thumbnail mode.

Wake up. Coffee. Work. Gym. Dinner. Bed. Same again tomorrow.

Sounds bleak. Except that's an absurd compression of what actually happened.

You woke up after spending eight hours unconscious while your brain generated private hallucinations. Light from a star ninety-three million miles away came through your window. You made a hot drink from roasted seeds grown somewhere you've probably never been. You spoke to people who weren't physically near you and their voices appeared instantly inside a tiny object in your hand. You moved heavy things around until your muscles became tired enough to eventually rebuild themselves stronger. You ate plants that came out of dirt. Maybe an animal that once swam in an ocean. Then the planet rotated away from the sun and you voluntarily became unconscious again.

Tuesday.

Maybe boredom is sometimes a resolution problem. We haven't run out of things to experience. We've zoomed so far out that everything looks the same.

And I'm not suggesting we all start staring at our coffee every morning whispering wow. Please don't.

I'm saying there is something incredibly fun about occasionally removing the label. Look again.

But this is where I think it gets more interesting than simply noticing that humans are weird.

Because the second something familiar becomes strange again, it also becomes slightly less fixed. And that creates room for play.

If this is just how things are done suddenly becomes oh, this is just how we've collectively agreed to do this…

a useful question appears: What else could it be?

Dinner doesn't technically need a dining table. A date doesn't need drinks. Exercise doesn't need a gym. Rain doesn't automatically mean get inside. Thirty doesn't need to look like whatever you've been told thirty looks like. An awkward silence doesn't need rescuing. A wrong turn doesn't necessarily need correcting immediately. And a Tuesday owes absolutely nothing to Tuesday.

We spend so much of adulthood becoming competent at navigating reality that I think we occasionally forget we're allowed to play with it.

Not recklessly. Not in a quit your job, move to Bali, LIVE LAUGH LOVE sort of way. Please keep whatever commitments you actually like.

I mean something much smaller. And, I think, more interesting.

Play begins where the obvious interpretation ends.

Something goes wrong. Okay. What else could this be?

Something is boring. What happens if I change one rule?

Something is awkward. What happens if I don't rush to make it unawkward?

You're somewhere you've been a hundred times. What would you notice if you'd never seen it before?

There's a tiny freedom in refusing to experience everything exactly as advertised.

I've realised I do this instinctively when things go slightly wrong.

A plan collapses and somewhere underneath the irritation, another part of my brain goes: Interesting. What happens now?

Wrong road? Let's see where it goes.

Unexpected five-hour wait? Fine. Apparently this is where we live now.

Rain starts while I'm outside? There is always a small internal negotiation between the sensible adult who would like shelter and whatever feral part of me wants to see what happens if we just continue.

That doesn't mean inconvenience magically becomes wonderful. Some inconveniences remain aggressively inconvenient. A cancelled flight is still a cancelled flight. Heartbreak is still heartbreak. Grief isn't improved by pretending it's a quirky side quest. That's not what I mean by play.

I mean that reality can contain more than one interpretation at once. Something can be annoying and funny. Uncomfortable and interesting. Uncertain and an opportunity to get curious.

You can be completely inside an experience and still occasionally catch yourself experiencing it. And sometimes that tiny bit of distance is enough to loosen its grip.

I've been nervous before something important and suddenly noticed: Oh look. My body thinks PowerPoint might kill us.

Still nervous. But now also slightly entertained.

Both can exist. That's useful.

Maybe that's why I don't actually want to “take life less seriously.” I hear that advice all the time. I don't agree.

I want to take my life enormously seriously. I'm here for an offensively limited amount of time. I care what I do with it. I care who I love. I care what I make. I care what I notice.

What I want to take less seriously is the assumption that everything needs to be experienced in the most obvious way.

I don't want familiarity to make me miss my own life. I don't want to become so fluent in being alive that nothing surprises me anymore.

I want to catch reality out of character.

The invite;

For one day, catch yourself doing ordinary things.

Then describe what you're doing without using its normal name.

Don't say: I'm at the gym.
Try: I'm in a room full of strangers repeatedly moving heavy objects against gravity to persuade our bodies to redesign themselves.

Don't say: I'm in a meeting.
Try: Seven floating heads are currently discussing a problem that didn't exist until we invented it.

Don't say: I'm stuck in traffic.
Try: Hundreds of us have individually climbed inside metal boxes and are now collectively annoyed that everyone else had the same idea.

The stupider it sounds, the better. Because removing the label forces you to look at the thing again.

And then ask: if I stopped experiencing this exactly as advertised, what else could I do with it?

You don't need to transform the moment. Just play with it. Change one rule. Notice one thing. Do something slightly unexpected. Increase the resolution. See what happens.

We're animals on a rock flying through space.

We've invented Wi-Fi. Passports. Weddings. Tax returns. Rollercoasters. Birthday candles. Kissing. Alarm clocks. Voice notes. Tiny umbrellas specifically for drinks.

We fall in love. We make things that didn't exist before. We get embarrassed. We dance when certain combinations of vibrating air happen. We spend enormous amounts of time worrying about emails.

And occasionally, if you're paying attention, the whole production slips out of character for a second.

You see it again. Not meeting. Not airport. Not Tuesday. Just this completely bizarre thing happening while you're lucky enough to be here for it.

Catch it. Fuck with it a little.

Life is fucking hilarious if you pay attention.