There is a scene in the Curious Case of Benjamin Button where the movie explores the concept of sliding doors (there is also a movie called ‘Sliding Doors’ but refer to Benjamin for quality). The idea is that if this happened, or this didn’t happen then this or that would have happened instead. It’s an idea that we like to romance ourselves with when it comes to not asking that person to dance or ‘losing’ the lottery... ‘If I only picked that number..’ 'If she only looked this way'... We fend off the inevitable randomness of reality with our imaginations that are addicted to opening and closing the sliding doors of our past and future. We apply theories and models to why things happen or why they did not and as soon as something happens outside the zone of expectation we come up with a theory or model to prove that it too had a place in our understanding of the world. We are inconsolably creatures of explanation. On Wednesday something happened that I am finding it very difficult to square with my ‘sliding door’ views of the world. I almost passed out on a tram and ended up in hospital where I was put under anesthetic and given cardioversion to reboot my heart to beat at a normal pace. With a family riddled with doctors and health professionals, why it is my heart decided to fuck up seemed to be the question on everybody’s mind. It doesn’t make sense. I’m young, I hardly smoke or drink, I don’t take drugs and I have no family history of heart disease. So why?

The best answer we could come up with was that because I have been drinking 3 or 4 coffees a day (occupational/geographical hazard of living in Melbourne and working from Cafe’s!), that the increase in intake had put extra stress on my ticker. But this is hardly a plausible reason for a healthy heart to go into fibrillation. I am still yet to complete my tests but the whole experience has left me to accept that in this scenario, the mind of my heart is really more than I will ever understand. It’s inexplicable, a divine anomaly. An unavoidable, random event that happened to teach me something (as all things do) about life and my place within it. When it was all happening, my world was crashing around me (visually and psychologically). I actually thought I was going to die. I thought ‘this is it, who would step into my shoes with Hello Sunday Morning. I hope my mum will be OK’ (not it that order obviously ;)). And the big question I asked myself was, ‘do I have any regrets?’ The answer to this question seemed to form a blanket of acceptance of my situation because I don't... but the thought of missing out on life kind of pissed me off too. Lying helplessly on that hospital bed, I think something within me did actually die. The boy in me that has been capricious with my time under the assumption that I have 60 more years of it to spend, died. The experience taught me that we are all really on borrowed time, that we are just gambling on house money in a game with infinite variables and sooner or later we will lose. We might as well go all in.