Death is the fear that we learn to ignore. Yet it comes when it has to and in a swift moment, ends our life. Such is life, fragile as a snowflake. We live and plan for the next sixty years, often ignoring the fact that we can be dead the next hour. Death is simple; it comes to us all. What’s not simple is the process of dying. Most of us fear it to the extent that we become ignorant of it. But then it sneaks its way to people close to us, and for a brief moment in our lives, we are reminded that it still looms over our head even when we choose to ignore it.
There is no meaning of dying other than except you die. What I believe is, there is no subjectivity to death. It’s just a part of our life, which we will never experience. Interesting right? We die, but its the living who people experience our death. For dead, there is nothing left. There is a consciousness or not; I don’t know. I don’t know if there is an afterlife or not as well. But I believe science and it says, there is no afterlife. So that would mean that we just cease to exist after we die. That is a painful way to see it, right?
Life is Pointless, or is It?
You work all your life and boom, in a second you are gone only to not have any existence anymore! So one begs the question, why strive to do anything anyway then? Why does anything truly matter? For those of you who don’t know, the concept of questioning life with such a perspective is called Nihilism.
Well, that’s the thing. You can see your life as something pointless because nothing you do matters. Or you can see your life as a fragile object, which can end at any time, and so you can give it a purpose and make it worth your time on the planet. The biggest thing that you can do with your life is to help others and be kind to them. You want your life to mean something? Go out there and start living for people other than yourself. The value of your life will increase a million folds.
This is an amazing part of us. We fear what we don’t understand, and we ignore and run from our fears instead of facing them. It’s the same with death, we fear death, and so we run from the thoughts of it. We fear losing people a lot, as if they were ours, to begin with anyway! So much so that we start believing our lies. How many of us get up in the morning and think that this can be our last day here. Not many!
We instead focus on the temporary things so much that we start believing that they are the part of a larger picture. People are temporary; even if they don’t leave you, they can die. Money is transient; there is absolutely no much amount of money you can earn that will allow you to live forever in your body. Everything that we do, either good or bad, takes us an inch closer to death.
Even after thousands of years on this planet, a large part of humanity hasn’t been able to accept death for what it is. What is death, after all? It is nothing; it means nothing. But due to the presence of our death, our lives mean everything. Things that we do while we are here define our lives. Everyone will cease to exist someday, but that is what makes life so interesting.
You Can’t Beat Death
There is nothing that we can’t do and nothing which we can’t achieve. That phrase is wrong. There is something that you can’t do, and there is something which you can’t achieve. It is that you cannot fight death and achieve immortality. Rich or poor, Good and evil, death will knock on your doors. You can never stop the inevitable. Your memories can live forever in other peoples mind, but that doesn’t make you any lesser dead.
How interesting it is that everyone who explains death does it from the viewpoint of living. But it is not surprising at all at the same time, for there is no data for after death. Who can account for the dead? Dead can’t speak, and god save me if they do, for that day, I don’t want to be alive. Anyway, no one has ever explained how death is. Just a side note here – I don’t want to believe people who say that there is an afterlife and they have experienced it for the brief time they were brain dead. The reason I don’t want to believe them is how can they be so sure of something when they were brain dead, how can their brain not end up with illusions?
The truth about people who experienced being brain dead for a few minutes is that they need to believe in something and take a stance. Some will say that there is an afterlife and they have experienced it. Why? Because they don’t want to put themselves into a situation where they will have to think about where they were for a brief period for which they can’t account anything. One of the reasons it is that way is because it is too scary to think about it like that. Because we would know the answer – there is nothing! But we don’t want to accept that; we want to live our life with beliefs which make us feel that we are going to live forever and that everything we do while we live won’t cease to exist the time we die.
Don’t Ignore Death, You have Less Time to Eventually Meet it
There is nothing wrong to think that there is an afterlife if that gives you hope. But it is wrong to ignore death. It is wrong to ‘forget’ that it will come to us because that allows us to fall in the trap of an unrealistic life where we have time to do everything that we want to do.
Buddha said, “The trouble is, you think you have time.” The truth is, we don’t. Dying literally takes a second and can happen in a million ways. You can just fall down the stairs of your home and die of breaking your neck or brain haemorrhage. But we ignore death and live all our important stuff which truly matters into the uncertain hands of tomorrow.
The Truth Of Life is Death
Death is the purest truth about our life. It means that it will end. There is no debating on this fact. Life will end for each of us. How we interpret our lives according to death is something that we have the power over. I think we can look at life in one more way.
This is yet another simple truth of life for me. Life is suffering and death is not. Till the time we are suffering, we are alive, and when we are not, we are dead. Suffering brings our consciousness at play. When we are not suffering, we don’t think about anything that would potentially help us grow. But death is peaceful; it knows that there is no consciousness to deal with, no decisions to worry over, no work to get done, no morality, no fighting, no religion, nothing.
It won’t be dark; there won’t be light, it will just be nothing. But that nothingness probably is the biggest driving factor for most of us. It is what drives us to do something. If everyone knew that they were never going to die, no one would strive to grow. No one would want to stay at the top of the chain because there is no exit for life; there is no death. So you can just stay comfortably where you are, and no one is coming to eat you.
But death is an essential part of our lives. Even though we don’t experience it, we should always embrace it. It always walks with you, eats with you, sleeps with you. Death is you. The moment you took your first breath, you also took your first breath for the very last time. With every day passing, you are dying.
Make Peace With Death, You have No Other Option
Death is something we all need to make our peace with. Sure, it is scary, but death isn’t anything. What really scares us is the nothingness after that and the way we die. We don’t want to feel the pain of dying. Not only the physical pain but the kind which we face while leaving the ones we love behind us. But that’s how life and death are. When people close to you die, you can do nothing but wish them goodbye, and when you die, you can wish the living goodbye. In either of the situations, you are helpless and powerless.
Can you overpower death? You can’t and you don’t want to. Believe me, the beauty of something lies in its ending. We love stories for the end. No one wants to keep reading a story which never ends and doesn’t have a conclusion. As Iron Man Aka Tony Start said, ‘Part of the journey is the end.’ Embrace the end, because, without it, our life doesn’t mean anything.
Personally, death doesn’t feel comfortable, and maybe it never will. But I know, someday it is coming for me and that day can be honestly tomorrow, today, a few minutes from now. So I will not waste this moment. I will give meaning to my life for there is nothing after the end. I want to live right so that I can die right and join the nothingness.
No Offence to any religion or people with beliefs for an afterlife. I would be nothing but grateful and happy that I exist in some form after death. But I just know, there is nothing such as that. If there is, I hope, I get to meet Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor in the afterlife. I will thank them for all the entertainment they provided us. They work on to live with us, and I hope someday, mine does as well.
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