A Rattle on Death
Potential Trigger Warning: This brief essay will talk about death. It’s mostly personal thoughts and such. Please don’t proceed if you are going through hard times and stumbled upon this piece accidentally.
Without Death There’s No Life After All
Isn’t there something very primitive about death? How it is unconquerable, invincible, unbeatable feels very strange.
I’m not fixated on this topic. Still, it occasionally pops into my mind and makes me wonder how everything around us is set to “die” one day. Not only humans, societies also die; countries die; companies die; tools “die.” Everything comes to an end.
When people die, we bury or cremate them. A whole life full of achievements, loves, hates, and ideas disappear, leaving nothing but memories and some paperwork.
Surprisingly, the idea of the impending end does not drive us crazy. We live knowing that it will happen to us someday. In fact, we don’t even try to prevent it. We smoke, drink, take on extreme activities and even go to war. Some believe there’s a reward after passing, while others reject it. Regardless of our stance, we embrace death and walk towards it.
We are born knowing this concept; we are born with fear, a superb mechanism that protects us from dangers as much as possible. Still, our approach to death isn’t merely related to our id. The way we see and act towards death is governed by socio-cultural constructs. Think of how Stoic philosophers of yore believed that a person must deserve death through a life of toil and labour. For them, death was also a process; a checkbox to tick at the bottom of a lifelong to-do list. Most other faiths and philosophies on the other hand, saw death as a door to a new and eternal life.
But, all in all, death is one of our most primitive realities. And since we cannot prevent it from happening, we always find new ways to elevate its mental effect to something more exalted, more complex than it actually is. I personally choose to embrace it as a mere finishing line.