Past Lives

Do you ever get the feeling that you have done something or have been somewhere before, and yet know that it wasn't in this life? Some may call it deja vu, but I really think that we have all had a past life. I took a course at the local college where the instructor explained ( theoretically) why we may have unfounded abnormal fears of certain situations. For instance, I have a primary fear of dark water and sharks. I mean I can't even look at a picture of either without a great sense of foreboding. Yet, I have never had an encounter with a shark or been lost in an open sea of dark water... at least not that I am aware of. The instructor at the college explained that you have these fears because that is probably how you died in one of your past lives. Hmmmmm, an interesting concept at best. So the person who has arachnophobia must have been bitten to death by a band of cross venomous spiders. The person who has claustrophobia must have been a bell ringer, but minus the bell. In case you don't know where the phrase "saved by the bell" comes from I will enlighten you ( I sound all religious- yesch). Back in the olden days (now I sound like my father, bless his soul) people would often (key word- often) be mistaken for dead. I can see how this could happen, people slip into a coma after falling off a horse, eating poisonous mushrooms and falling into a coma like state, reading a blog and slipping into a coma like state ( just checking, snap out of it!) so these poor people would be buried. Well, sometimes these people would be dug up (missed the reason why, must have dozed off at that point of the lecture) and low and behold the inside of the lids of the coffins were found to be ripped to shreds. A frantic attempt by the boxee to escape their confines. Well, of course being 6 feet under no-one is going to hear you (heck, sometimes being in the same room with someone they don't hear you, selective hearing I think it is called) so the entrapped would soon suffocate and die (again). So came the invention of rigging a line from the coffin's interior to above ground where it was attached to a bell, which was next to an attendee who would sit there and wait for the bell to ring. If the slumberer was not ready to be permanently slumbered, they would only have to pull the string to ring the bell and they would be dug up and saved, so, saved by the bell. So after all this, I think that in one of my past lives I must have somehow been involved in something medical. I am fascinated by all things medicine. I collect old medical books, watch all the medical shows (the real ones, not ER and things like that, although I do love House because they always have some weird unknown medical condition that they only manage to diagnose in the last 4 minutes of the show and save a life, usually) and pore over texts that describe the many illnesses and plagues that have, well, plagued man since the beginning of time. Morbid you might think. I however find science fascinating. I regret not having had the smarts to carry on academically to secure a career in the medical field. I am rather jealous of a good friend of mine who is lucky enough to work in said field. She gets to look down the throats of people all day long, lucky her, I say! Well, I do not despair, oh no, because there is always my next life.

Ringing off for now,

Cat x