Thinking about mortality |
Let’s talk about mortality. But not in a morbid way. I know. Unheard of, especially from me. Especially in August.
Basically I went down a spiral where I keep
thinking about mortality, humanity, the meaning of life and all that good
stuffs recently. So here’s a brief summary of what my brain has been up to. Okay,
before I go ahead of myself, I just wanna say that obviously everything I just
stated can be answered from an Islamic perspective. I’m not denying that or
anything. I’m simply going on a “poetic” rant.
Coincidentally, I’ve been seeing or reading
a lot of stuffs that centre around the subject of life and death and what they
mean. In addition to, you know, real life experience… (In case you’re new here,
hi, I don’t know how to deal with grief). Anyways, we have a lot to unpack
today so let’s start with mortality.
Just this afternoon I came across this beautiful post about how scientifically, we are never truly gone because
“no energy is created in the universe, and none is destroyed… According to the
law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less
orderly.” Hey I may not know much about physics or photons and thermodynamic,
but it feels comforting to know that. It’s nice to know that “physically”, they’re
here, and not just spiritually.
When a person dies, people say “they’ll
always be in your memories.” But what if you were too young to remember? What
if you were too young to understand what loss means and you forgot to remember?
Even if you do remember them, memories get distorted every time you think about
them. Does this mean that the more you miss them, the more you lose them? Well,
does it even matter? Maybe the same rules apply here. Your loved ones are still
with you, but in a more “distorted to the point of chaos” kind of way. Maybe.
Or maybe they are alive through you.
Here, have another post that you’ll have to read. “I am a mosaic of everyone I’ve ever loved, even for
a heartbeat.” I will never forget the time my grandmother said I slouch against
the wall the same way my dad used to do. Or when my maths teacher (who was
classmates with my dad in school) walked next to my seat, stopped, looked at my
notes to then point at it and say, “you have the same handwriting as your dad.”
My handwriting’s changed so much, but it makes me warm to know that I got his
traits without even knowing about them.
I’m gonna move on from that before I get
sad.
There’s a fanfic that I read a few months ago where some of the characters are immortal. And I’ve
always found the concept interesting especially when the immortals love the
mortals. I wonder if they have seen enough deaths that it doesn’t hurt as much
anymore. Or maybe the pain never truly goes away so they have to carry it with
them through eternity. There’s too much grief to mourn over in a single
lifetime after all.
If I was immortal, would I put myself
through that pain for the sake of loving someone? Well, here’s what Passerine!Philza
said; “Over the years I’ve also learned of the things they do for each other.
Their lives will always be one year, one week, one day short, but it doesn’t
seem to matter much to them. They live anyway. They love anyway. Forgive an old
god for wanting a piece of that for himself.”
Humans know the price of loving someone. They
know they will have to deal with the heartbreak, with the loss, with the grief
of having to leave loved ones behind, or having loved ones leave this world
before they do. But they love anyway. They find all that pain is worth those
moments of warmth even if they last one year, one day, one second too short. I
guess my answer is yes. Precisely because death is inevitable, we should
make the most out of the life we get to live.
Personally, I don’t care much about making
a big impact on the world. I just want to know that my life did not go to waste
by being able to love the people that I care about, and being loved by them. I
want to leave my imprints on them. I like love that is soft and quiet but
constant and there. And I want to be that for my loved ones, screw the
rest of the world.
Well I guess that’s a good enough segue to
a Night in The Woods quote that I’ve been obsessed with. (The clip is from
Ranboo’s stream where I heard the line from and thank you Google Photos for
storing that clip cause I accidentally deleted it from my gallery)
“I believe in a universe that doesn’t care
and people who do.”
You don’t understand the visceral wave of
emotions that hit me during this scene. And it continues to pain me every time I
repeat it in my head. Think about it this way; the universe is so vast
and so old. If you’ve never seen one of those size comparison or big
bang theory videos and gotten an existential dread, have you even been on the internet?
Those videos put so many things into perspective and they make me feel so incredibly
small and insignificant. It’s a good thought process when I want
to remind myself that my problems and worries don’t last forever, or even a
single lifetime. But yeah, for the most part, it feels like nothing truly
matters. The universe doesn’t care.
Well, since that is the case, then why
should it matter that the universe doesn’t give a shit about me? If nothing
matters, then it also doesn’t matter what I choose to give a shit about in
life. The things I value, the meanings I engrave into seemingly meaningless
things, the people I love. When I die, and a hundred years down the line,
nobody knows about me, why would I care? I’ll be dead anyway. I care now and
isn’t that enough? To quote Angus some more, “the stars can stay up there and
not give a shit about us but this whale is pretty cool.”
Speaking of constellations, have you just sat
there and thought about how much of a storyteller humankind is? Like we draw lines
out of shining dots in the sky and we write epics about them. Look at Orion for
example. And then, speaking of Greek mythology, my favourite story is about how
red roses start to exist and become the symbol of love. Long story short,
Aphrodite pricked her foot on a white rose while she mourned over the death of her
lover, Adonis. Her blood seeped through the petals, thus creating red roses.
Basically, red
roses came from Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty’s blood.
What I’m trying to say is, in a seemingly meaningless
life, we write our own meanings into people and things that we care about before
we eventually die. And I think that’s beautiful.
Is that enough existential dread for you? Okay,
I’ll stop now. I hope you enjoyed your journey down this rabbit hole with me.
- Nik.