Today, my mortality hit me.
There are things in this world that are entirely inconsolable to me. Things that I will never understand no matter how many hours I spend pondering upon them. It seems this brain of mine just isn’t built to accept them. I think on them, and my brain overheats. It breaks down to its basic parts. I can’t wrap my mind around them; it just doesn’t bend that far. I’m frightened of it breaking.
Death.
It’s all around us from the moment we are born, though we aren’t even remotely aware of it. We’re exposed to it every day, we see in the news, we watch it on television, in books, in films, in games, everywhere. It seems an integral part of the human condition to obsess over the one fact that we all must come to face in time. We must all die one day.
I just can’t get my head around death.
Maybe as we are animals evolved to do whatever it takes in order to survive, our human brains evolved to be incapable of truly understanding, of accepting what it means to die. The most primitive of fears; the fear of the unknown. Fear built into us to halt the spontaneous suicide of species of animals throughout the life history of earth. Perhaps that is why religion was invented. After all, who wants to accept that one day they are just going to switch off? It’s something we all must do, a journey we all must take. No matter our place in the world, no matter our walk of life, no matter our fortunes or failures, we all must end our road here. It’s kind of poetically uniting when you think about it in that light. The ultimate expression of human unity through death; how very macabre.
No other thing in this world is comparable. It isn’t as simple a transition as day to night.
You think of all the people you see going about their daily lives, living, loving, laughing. Doing all the things humans do. And then one day they’re not. They no longer are.
How can someone just turn off? To be here one day and gone the next. How can the light that once shone in their eyes not be there anymore? How can it be that the warmth you used to feel when they hugged you has left them forever?
Where does it all go?
Biology, physics, science. It all tells us that they just switch off. That there’s nothing like a person left of them. Whatever it was that made them who they were has fled the world, never to return. Their warmth has defused away, all it ever was anyways was their bodily cells producing heat energy to stay alive. A process of homeostasis, so the proteins that make up the enzymes that keep the body running work at their optimum capacity.
It all seems so cold to me. Somehow not enough. Perhaps that’s just my animal brain talking. My survival instinct dominating my logic bound personage, forcing me to disregard simple fact. But the cold comfort of knowledge does not allow for ignorance for long. I am blessed, or cursed to live a life stricken with evidence. Do I want there to be more than what is in front of my eyes to such an extent as to defy reason? What my heart hopes for beyond all else is not a good enough excuse for me to believe in things I have no proof of. I envy those people who still live within that bubble; those who can continue to suspend their disbelief. Believe in something after. Something that comes next. Somewhere to go to. It must be so comforting. I can see the appeal of staying there, staying inside that bubble. Wrapped up in comfort. Being one of those people with enough faith in their belief that they know in their hearts that their lost loved ones are somewhere waiting for them. In this cold world that I live in; gone is gone. There is no more, nowhere to go after this life. Life ceases and we cease to be.
It seems a cruel fate, for us to live such a fleeting existence, for us to inhabit the world for such a small time in the grand scheme of things, and yet to have minds that wonder, and question what will be when we’re done.
I understand the bitter necessity of death however. With death comes new life. It opens a space in the world to be filled with the young of the older generations. Because of this, change can happen for the better. Things can evolve because of death. I don’t mean to romanticise it however, this makes it no easier to accept.
Do I fear death?
I fear things I cannot understand. I know one day I will turn off like so many before me. All I have accomplished will no longer mean anything to me because I will be gone. My tale will be over. My story told. I’m sorry to admit that in the past, at the darkest of moments I have in fleeting irrational thoughts, longed for death. Longed for a symphony of peace to quiet the cacophony of life. But no more. These days I long for life and the living. I want a world full of light and yet the darkness fast approaches me.
I had better get to working on that legacy…
Ramblings Of A Somewhat Sane Jay 