Much too often, I find myself musing over how fleeting life is. I don’t suppose I fear death, yet I am afraid of dying. People worry too much about what they’re going to find on the other side — if anything — but that part doesn’t worry me nearly as much as the moment of my death.
It could, after all, come knocking when I least expect it. It could be a month, it could be a year, it could be a decade. It could be fifty years. How do you even plan for something like that? People like to plan for everything in advance; it seems to be a human thing. But can you plan for your own death? Would you even be able to think of what to do if you knew when you were going to die?
It’s a worry that keeps you up at night. It’s an itch that gnaws at you whenever you think about the future. But then, something brilliant occurs to you; you don’t actually fear dying itself, because at worst, it’s just another ending. And what is an ending to us, if not a familiar harbinger of demise? What is sorrow, if not an old human friend?
Dying is the one fate every human, whatever their story, has in common. A family man living a life of blissful countryside quietude draws his final breath surrounded by the people he loves the most in the world. A reckless adventurer painting the tale of his life in untold heroics and unimaginable feats of human fortitude succumbs to a fatal wound at the end of the tragedy. A nameless extra, untoward of existence — more so a trinket of worldbuilding, a mantelpiece of amnesis, than a real person — dies in the background of an epic battle or a disastrous car crash without even getting a mention. And yet, they all die, and that death is final.
I catch myself rambling again. Rambling is a side effect of too much thinking, and that an unfortunate complication of being wise beyond your years. At least that’s what they say, though “thoughtful” might be a better word for it. I certainly can’t say there is a lot of wisdom in my bearings, or the way I usually choose to comport myself in the real world. (There, I’ve done it again. Such is the extent of my self-awareness, it seems.)
The more I think about it, the more I realize that dying and death are not the same at all. Dying is the final page of the story of a life; death is its ending. You might think those are one and the same, but you’d be surprised by how a universe of understanding could become lost in translation with the altercation of two unassuming words.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about all of the death, perhaps a little too much.
Not the deaths of people. That, I have long since come to terms with, as callous as it may sound. Mine is a stranger contemplation, a sentiment that resists being put into words as would the seas themselves the idea of confinement in a shard of glass. I will try, however, even for the sake of getting this absurd soliloquy somewhere.
The death of a life happens when its tales comes to an end, not when it stops drawing breath. It’s the same with a story. People put a lot of stock in whether a character survives the climactic conclusion to a book or a film, but when you flick your fingers for one final time and suddenly realize you’re on the last page, it won’t matter if anyone is left standing. That world ends the moment you close the book, its existence then a shimmering afterimage that quickly dissipates into an evasive understanding. A fond memory to summon up on a vacant afternoon.
That is the best explanation I’ve been able to come up with for the heart-rending emptiness one feels when finishing a story. That void is an understanding of death on the most subconscious level. It speaks to the human in us, reveling in the cruel, inevitable closure that awaits everyone at the end of this road.
How many characters has it been, now? How many lives? Hundreds? It’s a self-condemning practice, an addictive obsession. And your next fix is always investing in yet another story… yet another existence. And they break my heart.
I guess this is what I’ve been trying to say, verbosity notwithstanding. They break my heart.
The break my heart, but I can’t stop. For in every story is a morsel of truth, a sliver of the divine, a fragment of the answers my mind incessantly seeks. And the death… well, the death is just a measure of compulsive solace, preparing me and mocking me all the way unto my own inevitable doom.
What’s up, always i used to check webpage posts here in the early hours in the morning, for the reason that
i like to learn more and more.