Life-->Death

Passing on. Pushing daisies. Going six feet under. Kicking the bucket. Dying. However you wish to say it, it all means the same things. We are born to die. Of course, at birth, this is not our initial purpose or a purpose at all, but it is, technically, true. Lately, I can't help but seem to be thinking about death waaaayyy too much. I go through motions. I'll have mini-break downs where I will think about my death, and how to cope with this inevitability. Now, obviously, once I die, I won't be having to cope with anything because, well, I'll be dead, but it's just the very thought of it that tends to stir my emotions in a way that not many other things can. I continue, I calm myself down a bit, tell myself I shouldn't worry about it, try to distract myself and move on. Then, I think about my mom, my grandma (the last of my grandparents), my aunt and uncles, my great aunts and great uncles (who are all 75+ now), my friends, just people I know and I start to get somewhat emotional again, and eventually it all loops around and gets back to my own inevitable demise.

What is it, though? Is it the thought of not being alive anymore? I mean, we're so used to it, right? All our lives we've been alive (redundant, but you get what I mean). We don't remember anything from before we were born, hell, from before we were 2, and that number usually increases as we get older, so all we know is living. What is it about death that is so scary? It took me a while to figure out, but I'm sure this is what gets most people (of course, most people probably don't think about this as much as I have been lately, at least not at my age). I'm not scared of this temporary shell called a body rotting in the ground and becoming part of the Universe, it's what lies beyond, if anything. (This all ties into religion and a huge part of why people have religion, but some of that is covered in the entries below.) People are simply afraid to believe that they die and nothing happens, so they turn to something to comfort them, and there is nothing wrong with that. They live their life happily, not afraid of what happens when they die because they believe that they get to go to Heaven, which is a nice thought, whether it be true or not. I will not lie. I am afraid to believe that I die and nothing happens. It is the unknown that has us locked tightly in chains. It is not dying that scares us (I guess how we die does), but it is what may or may not happen after we have left this world and a thought, almost inevitable as death itself, of loneliness in death.

Go to school. Go to the mall. Watch TV. Walk down the street. Look around you. Everyone you see from the newborn babies carried by their mothers to the elderly folk on the power scooter will eventually die. While this may sound morbid, it is true. Everyone has to go through it. It is the irony of life. You are born to die but you don't live to die, you live to live. You live to be happy. You live to accomplish everything in life that you want to. You can't live in fear of something you have no knowledge of whatsoever. I can't live in fear of something I've no knowledge of whatsoever. Either way, when it happens, will I know? Will I, or my "soul", or whatever, go anywhere? There's only one thing to do and that is wait and find out. Until then, I live.




P.S. I also realized I just published this on the 8th anniversary of 9/11. (wow, that long already?) Wherever all of you who lost your place in this world are, may you be well, or rest in peace, whichever one it turns out to be.