Standing Room | 15 August 2009

Oh dear. Nearly 80 years ago Dorothy Parker wrote a bleak poem entitled ‘Resume’. Back then she must have thought she’d been fairly comprehensive in covering all possible self-inflicted exit routes.

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Times have changed — as indeed has the toxic cocktail of doom. Were Ms Parker alive today and living in England she might have felt the need to add a few revisions that attempted to embrace the withering wheels of misfortune that now precipitates not just our demise, but threatens to blight our very existence.

Conkers pain you:
Pools are damp;
Sunbeds stain you
And organics cause cramp.
Cars aren’t lawful;
Botox gives;
Cigs smell awful;
You might as well live.

Everything one does nowadays seems to come with a stark government health warning. From sunbathing to snacking, from smoking to overstressing, Big Nanny is just waiting to put you on the naughty step and insist you have a time out. The gilt has been striped off the gingerbread of pleasure and replaced with guilt. There seems to be an insidious drip-feed of potentially fatal consequences attached to simply everything we do — including a surreal, Utopian notion that if we’re really, really, really good and do as we’re told, death also will be reduced to yet another ‘option’.

Being given ‘guidelines of goodness’ has turned into a lucrative industry as it cunningly feeds into our natural desire for immortality — yet were we to buy into all the warnings we’re bombarded with and act accordingly, we’d be hard-pushed to find time to live — let alone die. Not only is most of the information impossible to act upon — it’s relentless.

Last week I gleaned the following nuggets of knowledge: optimism lowers the risk of heart disease, multitasking can be detrimental to one’s health as it increases dangerous levels of stress hormones and adrenaline, men with symmetrical faces are less predisposed to mental decline, predictive texting makes children more likely to indulge in thoughtless behaviour and stroking an animal can lower one’s blood pressure.