This content originally appeared on text/plain and was authored by ericlaw
Content Warning: This post is about mortality.
This morning, I awoke from a dream. I’d just discovered a ticking time bomb was a fake, and the dream ended as I said to my companion “There’s nothing quite as exhilarating as finding out that today isn’t the day you’re gonna die.”
As I opened my eyes in bed, my now-conscious mind unbidden replied “Okay, Universe, today you have the chance to do something REALLY funny.”
In my youth, I had remarkably little exposure to death– most of my elderly relatives had either passed away before my birth, or were still alive. I lost a distant uncle in my teens. I lost my maternal great-grandfather (99.75) when I was twenty. My first true friend when I was 33, while I was on vacation in the French countryside.
That’s not to say I never thought about death, just that I mostly had the unconsidered invincibility of youth and death was an abstract idea that didn’t occupy much space in my brain, except that I wanted to come to some sort of meaningful end. My general thinking was encapsulated by this clip in Starship Troopers:
If everyone’s gotta die eventually, it’s probably best not to worry too much about it.
Even today, mortality remains at something of a distance. Startlingly, I’m 45 and have yet to attend a funeral. Nevertheless, mortality has been on my mind more than ever these last few years, between losing friends and the end of my marriage. In part, these thoughts are not of my choosing, but it’s also something that I’ve chosen to embrace.
The walls of my house are adorned with Latin phrases: Memento Mori, Memento Vivre, Tempus Fugit, and Carpe Diem are joined by Esse Sequitur Operare, Advance the Plot, and Choose. These are all reminders of the same theme: Just as it’s important to recognize that you’re not going to live forever, it’s also important to realize that you’re currently alive. The grimmest outcome is being alive, but not behaving as if you are. If not now, when? You are what you do. Get busy living.
While striving to make meaningful and long-lasting contributions to the world can be fulfilling and better mankind, it’s also important to put such work in context. Amidst a longer (and somewhat grim) post, a talented writer observed “Look around you. Everything you see will cease to exist one day. Get over it. Sure culture eats strategy for breakfast, but entropy eats everything for dinner.“
This line of thought can lead to very dark places, but anyone who’s ever enjoyed a video game should get it — video games blink out of existence when you hit the power button, but that’s not to say that they’re either pointless or have no impact beyond the screen. In life, as in video games, if you’re never having any fun, you’ve missed the point. And in the darkest times, the fact of mortality provides solace — while all good things come to an end, so do all the bad things.
Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, for as long as you can. And strive to have as much fun as you can while doing it.
After spending decades where I sometimes acted like I was living out the marshmallow experiment, a line from Philip Su‘s latest book (life advice to his son) best encapsulates my realization: “You don’t “win” life if you never eat the marshmallow.“
Every day is a gift, and no tomorrow has been promised.
I hope you eat a marshmallow today.
Love,
-Eric
This content originally appeared on text/plain and was authored by ericlaw
ericlaw | Sciencx (2024-12-13T16:48:38+00:00) On Mortality. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2024/12/13/on-mortality/
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