First Time Round

You know, sometimes I have to give the reincarnation theory a bit of credit, because occasionally I meet people that seem to have the knack of life from the day they were born. They seem to know where they're going, what the various stages of life represent and generally how the whole thing is supposed to work. Simple to explain, these people were humans before and made all the mistakes, developed their tastes and generally figured a lot of it out in their previous life, or lives. Now although all this valuable experience would have been wiped from their memory when they croaked and were consequently reborn, some of those fundamental instincts could have remained ingrained in the core their being. Bastards.

You see I'm one of the other ones. There is no fucking way I've been human before, because I simply haven't got a clue. I can never figure out how this bloody life thing is supposed to work. I don't know what society wants me to do or be and I'm not even sure I'd enjoy doing or being it in any case. I thought it would all become clear when I became an adult, everything would all slot into place and my mature instincts would open up like an easy-to-follow instruction manual. But no, it just got worse, all the external factors became more complicated and all the social expectations became more confusing....my instincts didn't budge an inch.

I reckon I must have been an enlightened cat or something in my previous incarnation. And I either managed to accumulate an inordinate amount of karma in my one kitty life or there was some celestial administrative cock-up, the result of which was that instead of getting reborn as, lets say, a Malaysian Spider Monkey as would have been the case with the normal chain of promotion, I get upped all the way to homo sapien and get born an Irish chemist. (although it could be argued which of the two primates is, in fact, more advanced)

So that's it, My Theory. From cat to first-time human in just one spin of the reincarnational carousel. No wonder I don't have the knack of this life. I haven't had the chance to practice. I'm under equipped. It's not fair. Everybody else gets born with some sense of orientation and all I get is a bucket load of confusion and a fondness for napping on rooftops.