Zombies might already walk the earth

I was thinking this morning that one doesn’t need to be undead to be a “zombie.”

Specifically, I’m thinking here of that awesome zombie flick Shaun of the Dead (2004), which if you dig a little deeper under the surface is kind of a metaphor about how if you’re not careful, living can actually suck the life out of you, and not in a good way. You wake up, you go to a soul-draining job that you’re not totally happy about, you go home. The next day, you wash, rinse, repeat.

In the movie, there’s the scene where Shaun wakes up the morning after the zombie-fication starts, and he’s not entirely awake, but he wanders down to the corner store where he usually buys a paper and a drink or a snack and already, the audience can tell there are zombies about, but he doesn’t make the connection that something’s freaky, even freakier than the night before when he and his buddy were at the pub, doesn’t notice that there’s a bloody handprint on the door of the cooler he opens to get his drink, doesn’t think it too weird that the clerk at the store is missing and the store’s kind of a mess. Shaun just leaves his money on the counter and goes back home, oblivious to the people wandering aimlessly around the street or some of the destruction.

Here’s a good compilation somebody did that juxtaposes Shaun going to the store when things were normal, and when things weren’t. He doesn’t seem to notice much…

Point being that you can actually be a zombie without being undead, that your life can actually kind of drift along, you stuck in a job you hate, doing the same things over and over again, until before you know it, you’re so locked in you don’t even notice that an actual zombie apocalypse is under way because your synapses have been dulled by the anesthetized life you’ve been living.

So here’s your zombie survival tip for today: if you find that you are already living a zombie existence as I’ve described here, it might be time to try to make some changes. Get a new hobby. Play some sports (the physical conditioning will serve you well in an actual zombie apocalypse). Take some drives in the country. If you have access to awesome public transportation, go to neighborhoods in your city you don’t normally visit. If you’re in this country, take an Amtrak trip somewhere you’ve never been. If you’re in Europe, take a train somewhere you’ve never been. You’ve got to get past the zombie-fication that every day life can lead you to, so you can be sharper for the rest of your life (whether or not a zombie apocalypse occurs). You need a new perspective, mates. Go get one!

Happy Saturday!