Friday, February 27th, 2015

     When I opened this post on Friday, February 27th, I didn't know what kind of day it would turn out to be. I wasn't aware that, on a day now marked in infamy, a man infinitely important in my life would pass away. If I did, I don't know if I would've even gotten out of bed.
    It is often, in the face of a loss of human life, that those left behind think not of the passed, but of the effect the passing will have on themselves. Some might say that this is a selfish, and self-centered behavior, while others may argue that it is simply the human mind dealing with a stark reminder of its mortality. I must both concede with and stand against these claims, because while they are unarguably accurate, they are also something else: ignorant of the human thinking the thoughts. We think of the effect of a death on ourselves because that is all that we know to compare it to. In the face of inevitable death and the grand finality of existence, what else can we do but introspectively evaluate our lives? I have had the horrendous fortune of realizing this through repeating the funeral-going process, and while I would trade this wisdom or knowledge or whatever you may call it for never needing to go to a funeral, all I have is the tidbit: instead of entirely focusing on the fact of death, think towards the personal impact that the deceased had upon your life, and what it is about them that will make you remember them. Death is a bastard, but a fair and honest one, so it's up to us to cheat him. Don't you dare forget the people who you've lost in your life, the funeral's you've attended, the empty chairs or silent rooms left behind, because the moment you let go of those memories, is the moment you let that bastard win.
     That is why I won't spend much time wandering the dizzying thoughts of mortality and death, nor thinking about some selfish thing. No, I'll simply spend my time thinking over the memories that I have of Mr. Tom Oakes, and all the things he taught me, intentionally or otherwise. He was a good and honest man, and though I knew him in so brief a span of time, the things he taught me will last me a lifetime, and maybe more, when I pass down his teachings. I know no one really speaks ill of the dead, but I find myself lacking an ill thing to say. I search my memories for something (not as though I would want to speak ill of him), but I can honestly say that there is nothing I can remember nor conjure of Mr. Oakes that would besmirch his memory.
     Think toward the important people in your life, the ones who have taught you, improved you, or pushed you to be better, and be more aware of them, more grateful of them. And every single day, thank whatever God you believe in (if you're an atheist, thank statistical probability, random assortment, the Big Bang, and evolution) that those people are in your life, because it would be lessened without them.
DFTBA

The Din of Existence

     There is an undeniable feeling of despair that walks hand in hand with the belief that nothing is important. When we succumb, or rather, if we succumb to the riptide of inevitable death and potential insignificance, life seems pointless. But why is it then that we still get up? There is a simple decision that you and I make every morning, and one that most people aren't even awake enough to notice: waking up. Sure, everyone wakes up in the morning, and everyone has been waking up since before the dawn of opposable thumbs (with the exception of the infirm, the bed ridden, and the narcoleptics), but think of it from a different perspective. Think that not getting out of bed is a totally viable and available option in your life, and then realize that you chose to get up every single day of your life (with previous exceptions again considered and excused). I'm not really trying to be super peppy or happy or inspirational, but appreciate that fact. There will be a day when we won't be waking up in the morning, and never will again, and yet we as a species still get up every single day and live the life that happens before our own sleeping morning. For the past few years -and even still today- I've always wondered why people get up and do things when it technically doesn't matter (thank you nihilism), why there's this belief that things have to be done at all, and the answer can go many ways, but the one I find a predisposition towards is that of human stubbornness.
      "Oh! You'll be uncaring and apathetic universe? Well guess what, I'm still going to find meaning in my life anyway, so ha!" Take that stubbornness, and multiply not just be every person that is wake up and doing things everyday, but also all the people who have done things and those who will do things in the future, and that is the definition of the "indomitable human will."    
     It's something that many people talk about and write about and dream about, and it's what makes every person on the planet significant in some way, because by every persons act of living, we scream into the apathetic universe, our voices bellowing into its silence, and while I know that this battle cry of humanity will one day fall to hushed tones then back to silence, I am still proud to know that I have added to the din. Thank you for lending your voices, too.
DFTBA

Why Does Anything Matter?

 "Why does anything matter?" is a question that I find myself struggling with answering, and it's not like I'm going into any massive theological or philosophical tirade to seek the answer. I'm not expecting some grand epiphany to strike me in the brain like a brick through a window, and I'm not hoping even that that will ever happen. In fact, some part of me doesn't want to find some answer to that question for two reasons:
1: There's an immense chance that there is no specific answer to the question of purpose and intent, which means if I never learn that that's true, I can still "pretend" that there is an answer, and therefore a purpose.
2: Even though I'm young and will be infinitely inexperienced to the ways of the universe, I have come to terms with the search for the answer as an important part of life, and that that is a pretty darn good answer to the question.
     For a majority of human history, the purpose of life has been maintaining a caloric intake large enough to sustain life, and produce more life to take the place of your life when you die, as well as a general idea of making the world a better place for that next generation, but what then is the over-arching purpose to that existence? One day, the universe will die, and all of the existence of this universe will one day be no more, and there will no longer be a world left to make better for the next generation, and what then?
     It would be foolish to say that there must be something more to life than just eating and skoodilypooping, but it is despairing to think that that's all there is to life, and this conflict of ideas, this potentially life-shattering train of thought brings into question other things about life, such as love, or sacrifice, or morals. Not to get all nihilistic about it, but could it be possible that none of these things holds any real meaning, because they will one day no longer exist at all, or does the fact that they are finite and mortal in their existence what makes them so profound?
     In the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, Eru (the over-god, for simplicities sake) made both Elves and Men, but he loved Men more, and gave them the gift of short, mortal lives, while the Elves would travel to Valinor (Elf heaven) upon their death, living forever under the stars and moon and sun. To you and I, the gift of mortality and a final death seems like a really cruddy gift, but if you can figure out why it's actually a blessing, then you're really liking outside the box.
DFTBA
JD G.