On an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld talked about how in the old days nobody wore helmets. “Nobody cared. Remember when life was kind of a cheap, throwaway thing? Was it more fun? Of course it was!”
This hit me, actually. He’s right. For ages life was nothing special, you expected to die at any moment, and seeing other people die wasn’t considered traumatic – it was actually a popular form of entertainment.
What does this mean? We’ve come to agree that “life is precious,” and this prevents us from really being able to play with it. It’s an age of anxiety because it feels like there’s so much at stake, “You only live once!”
But this is all a flash in the pan. We’re only here for a moment. It doesn’t really change anything or mean anything. We should be able to play with it. Why not?