Posts tagged memento mori

Given that I’m sort of naturally a macabre sort of person (as I’m sure you’ve noticed and that’s why you’re asking) it’s natural to figure that I think about death a lot.  And I suppose I do; as an abstract thing.  I think about death in broad, mytholgical terms, as a sort of symbol that we deal with and deify.

Death as a reality is a difficult beast.  Rot, decay, loss, mortality, time.  These are ugly concepts that are difficult for any of us to wrap our brains around, and when we do, there is generally one gut reaction.  We feel helpless and small and either consult our higher power of choice or we feel utterly depressed in the face of oblivion.  That’s normal.  That’s healthy.  But it can get dangerous if you linger on it too long.  The world does move on when we leave; the show you watch goes on, society rolls over the deaths of the most important people in the canon of history, the natural world blooms beyond the extinction of entire species and the rending of continents.  But every single atom leaves its mark, and you darling are made of billions of these.  Some theorists believe that every particle is in fact one particle existing in every place simultaneously, sort of quivering between dimensions and time and space and being and not being all at once.  So when one of us winks out, we’re really just blinking into some other place.  We won’t know until we get there.

When you’re feeling scared or torn down by the thought of your own death, try to realize that it is our tininess that makes life worth anything at all.  If life went on forever, if tomorrow were always certain, we would have nothing to look forward to, nothing to anticipate or hope to gain before our time was up.  We wouldn’t grow or learn or have children or love others with that frenzy that comes from knowing one day it will end.  There’s a marvelous energy to be had in things that burst open and then perish; our most delicate flowers, our brightest fireworks, even the long impossible deaths of stars.  

Yes, one day you absolutely will die.  I’ll be dying right there with you.  I could walk outside and explode tomorrow morning, and with the exception of a few people who I dare say might be a little upset, the world would go on exactly the same without me.   But I can’t let that terrify me, and you mustn’t let mortality terrify you or make you feel insignificant.   Don’t spend a second worrying about what will be or won’t be when you’re gone; the lovely caveat of dying is that you’ll be gone and what’s left behind won’t matter much to you.  Worrying about it now only eats up the time you’ve got, which is not nearly so short as you might think.  

Human life does not pass on a watch; ticking and insignificant, a countdown to darkness.  Time within a human lifetime stretches and slows; one moment may last forever, and the present is all we ever have.  Every moment is simply this moment; at once our first and last.