Inside the Box

I cannot, within the span of this lifetime, complete all of the thinking I have left to do.  I am afraid I am going to run a bit over.  I hope that is all right.  

It isn’t that I have been slacking off or anything.  I mean, I’ve been thinking during the week and on weekends and holidays.  I am all the time thinking but there just isn’t adequate time - if you know what I mean.

         Even when I am reading books about what someone else has thought - I’m thinking, what were they thinking? And television, well of course I’m thinking while I am watching television.  Mostly I’m wondering how on Earth this garbage gets put on the tube. 

         Anyway - after having done the math on my expected life duration, minus that which has already passed, and then calculating that into my remaining questions - well there you have it.  I am over by at least eight point two years.

         Avoiding any puns about thinking inside the box, let’s consider for a moment that a person could, after having passed over, continue on with their thinking.   I would have to think that their new surroundings might influence their perspective just a bit.  Most likely their initial thoughts might run toward that machine, the one that told the doctors all brain activity had stopped.  Boy are they in for a surprise.

         But seriously, after we hang up this coat and wander down the all into the bright light, who’s to say we’re not still thinking about changing the furnace filter or hooking up the garden hose so we can wash the car?  I mean, we are not actually a very complex creature.  

We’ve existed on Earth for hundreds of years, given more land that we need and we’re still killing each other over boundaries.  One group processes our food through chemicals while another attempts to find a cure for why we are dying off. 

         One bunch of us munches down the rain forest while another studies the changing weather patterns.  And just when our library shelves are full of closed books we open Windows and read our filtered history and slanted news through computers - like penned up veal being fed probabilities and outcomes.

         I guess that if I were to just write off those last eight point two years and simply call it a day, whenever that day comes, I too could rest peacefully without all the stress and hubbub and just mentally focus on a flat line with a study hum in the background.   You know, just to give that machine something to think about.

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