Impending

It is the end of the world again.

Only yesterday I was telling a friend of mine that we shouldn’t be making fun of apocalyptic movies because it’s really about little insecurities blown out of proportion.

But that’s not to say those insecurities aren’t valid. It’s just blown out of proportion.

One might perhaps equate a cracking heartbreak to the force of “a piece of rock, just six miles wide” that “hit with the force of 10,000 nuclear weapons,” as the narrator from Armageddon, Charleston Heston, put it.

Morgan Freeman said, while in character as President Beck in Deep Impact, that “Life will go on. Life will prevail.” But I do wonder if that really is what most people are concerned about when the thought of the end of the world enters their hearts.

Take smaller disasters, like The Birds, or The Towering Inferno or something of that sort, where not the entire world collapses, but rather a smaller world.

Does life prevail? We don’t really care. At least, if you’re not in the town where the birds are fiendishly tearing away your windows and doors, or if you’re not in the building suffocating to death with no escape. What you’d be doing in such a scenario would be to sit at home, read the papers, turn on the news, lament at such misfortune for a few moments, maybe talk to a friend about it over the phone, then carry on with life, as if you just read a good piece of fiction.

Life does prevail, because you’re not dead, so we don’t really care.

Anyway, insecurities.

What would we do if we were aware of an impending doom. If the world is going to end tomorrow, the day after, the week after, two hours later?

Disaster movies speaks of our insecurities. Blown out of proportion, perhaps, but it always gives human beings a window of opportunity, where we are made to be aware of an impending doom, so that we can prepare ourselves, fight back, or something like that.

Which makes me wonder if it really is blown out of proportion. Because there’s a window of opportunity.

In real life there rarely is any form of “impending”-ness. Our world ends with the force of ten thousand nuclear bombs that knocks our senses dead. In fact, it knocks us dead without us realizing that we’re dead.

So, are you ready to die?