"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”
- Chuck Palahniuk
I was in high school when I first read the Bible. There in the first few chapters, after creation, it was said that God hadn’t really put death into people’s lives as we see these days. Man could live on for centuries. There were people who were 300, 400 years old. Then when He noticed that the planet is getting too populated, as we procreated at a much faster rate than we died. He introduced death by illness, old age etc. This way the Bible said that, God could be closer to His favorite child sooner. That death was just another strange way of God showing His love for us. Pretty much the same was written in Gita, Koran and all the other religious books. That life is a test and that at death those who have lived righteously and are worthy will go to heaven. That life and death is just a cycle, an infinite loop that keeps repeating itself forever. Science while having no definition for life, it always mysteriously proved incapable of defining the good things, defines death as the state reached by a life form after its gradual but inevitable erosion of health and immunity. No matter how much they romanticize or rationalize death, I am still very much scared of it.
I am not really scared of the actual thing itself, not completely. But what it represents. It represents the end of the known and a sudden plunge into the unknown. There are many religious texts and romanticized fiction desperately trying to make sense of this unknown part of our existence. Because thats what it really is, part of our existence. It is very much a part of our time on this planet. We are born, and then we die. Its a rule. The trouble is that we have been programmed by our culture and civilization, the books and the media, to be mortally afraid of death. There is something really odd in the way that we are ready to accept everything that nature has given gratefully but when it comes to death we are so disgusted. We never actually are ready to accept it, even when deep in our hearts we know it cannot be put off; even we somehow expect to die sooner or later, when it actually happens we are shell shocked.
I read this article on the random Wiki News links the other day. A guy has a heart attack while on the metro. He dies right there, on his seat and stays unnoticed for two complete round trips. People, all around him, boarded and left the metro. Some sat on the seats beside him and didn’t even notice that they have a dead guy amongst them until some guy prodded him for getting that seat for his pregnant wife. Imagine the shock they and the rest of the cabin were in when the guy’s body slumped on the floor, eyes wide open and tongue out. The lady probably did not sleep well for many months to come. Probably still lies on the couch at her shrink’s office and recalls that event with a cold sweat running through her body. It was enough to give anybody the chills.
When I showed this article to the guys they all were fixated on the lack of humanity in the city dwellers, the lack of metro personnel to oversee the trains, one even started to comment on the effects of such an incident on the health of the baby in the woman’s womb. While they were busy with that, my mind was still stuck on the dead guy. He probably had a family, a bunch of office friends he went to the bars with, a whole lot of friends from school and college who were probably planning for a reunion, a wife who was back at home waiting for him to come home with the groceries from the supermarket. He had a life, which now has come abruptly to an end, in a busy, crowded, noisy metro train. And he lies there unnoticed, forgotten, neglected for nearly an hour!
I am, maybe more scared of the chance of being forgotten, unnoticed. People oddly have a grading scheme for this process, probably unconsciously built-in by their own mind to keep itself from breaking to pieces at every recurring loss of another loved one in their lives. The grading scheme goes from the closer circle of spouse, children, parents, friends, their families, relatives etc. The circle moves outwards and the farther you are placed in somebody’s circle the more sooner you are likely to be forgotten by that person. And being forgotten might hurt anyone, dead or alive. People have a very short memory when it comes to remembering the ones that had passed away, especially the ones that you aren’t too close to. Soon you become that guy who died of leukemia. Somehow, sometimes they seem at loss to put a name to that guy. Then they soon forget that person completely except in family functions or college reunions when somebody who has no idea of his passing away comes up to you and asks whatever happened to that guy from Mumbai? This probably is for the best at times. It helps to ease the pain for the ones left behind and it helps them to move on with their lives.
The best thing we can do in our time here on this planet, is not earn a billion bucks and buy an exotic island, we don’t remember half of them after they are gone. What we really need to be doing is win a million hearts. Do things that might change people’s life for the better. People might forget the hand with the heavy wallet after sometime, but they will always remember the hand that helped them up. That’s any human being’s real wealth. Your remembrance quotient. Any guy that you have a warm memory of has more chances to be remembered than anyone else. To have that, you need to get to the inner circle of people’s life. Their lives must be incomplete without your presence in it. You must be there in each of their happier moments in life, more often as the reason for it. You should be so valuable to them, that they must always be compelled to keep you close to their hearts. And the people who reach there are never forgotten, they live on for all eternity. The rest most definitely will be. Out of sight, out of mind.
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