The frailty of a human, of any human, is something that slips the mind of many a person on a daily basis. There rarely ever is a time in which someone wishes to think about their own incessant wilting. Why would they? It’s a truly bitter romance to wish to grow while acknowledging the ever-persistent slide into an inescapable end. Some make of it what they can, some ignore it entirely, and some are so consumed by the dread that it, in turn, consumes them. Each person tends to go about it a different way.
At any given moment I could go. Anyone can go. Is there a lack of security in that? We can face our demise at any moment, regardless of coming face to face with it, and yet, the fear is rarely there. I don’t know if I will have more fear in the moments before my death than I do during the moments in which I imagine it. Maybe I will know in that moment that my time has come, but I will surely have spent more time thinking about it than I will actually dying. Spending hours, maybe days, of our lives thinking about something that will happen in an instant. Kind of ironic.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about dying lately.” “Regardless of how this particular thing works itself out, I will be dying… and so will you. We’re all hurtling towards death, yet here we are for the moment alive. Each of us knowing we’re gonna die, and each of us secretly believing we won’t.”
What is our lives if not a smear of finite moments thrown across on expansive cosmic bulletin board? Many of these moments and memories will be lost in the throes of time. Some of them may be a personal view of something far greater, something that many will remember. You may find yourself part of a moment whose memory far outlives you, but the impact it leaves on you might be less than that of a particular summer evening. The importance of one day within the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of days you live can only be determined by your perception of it.
It’s not a grandiose or pompous practice to search for a different value in every one of your waking moments. Any second that you are alive, any second that you exist, can have meaning far dissimilar to that of the second it succeeds. The same insecurity that comes with the uncertainty of your time here can be seen as an opportunity to do something, or be something you never have.
No two people are the exact same, and likewise, no two lives are the exact same. We may find ourselves in a shared place and time multiple times throughout our lives, but the context and the manner in which we got there will be entirely different. Some can find solace in the knowledge of their own individuality, the idea that they will be the only iteration of this specific human for the entire history of our existence. Some may find a deep fear in not being like anyone else, feeling as if they will not be accepted for the perceived lack of similarities to those around them.
There’s great fear in the unknown. Comfort eludes when the knowledge of what lies in front of you is obscured. But the fear of death is a funny thing, to me, at least. I personally am terrified of dying, which wasn’t always the case, but I’ve grown into the fear more and more. I am terrified of the unknown that comes after. There are some people who seem to have an understanding of what it is that lays in wait for us, but I choose not to subscribe to those ideas. As much as I fear the uncertainty of death, I would much prefer to keep it that way than to have a grand understanding of where I will go when my time is up. I cannot support the idea that we must live a specific way to ensure that our death comes with meaning and some sort of value. All death has meaning regardless of the life that was lived before it. Some people, myself included, might revel in the death, or simply just choose not to mourn, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the death had some intrinsic meaning and value.
I could never claim to have an understanding of this part of the human experience, and I don’t know that any of what I have said truly means anything at all, but I think it is important that I remind myself that I am not here forever.
Grub's Dirt 