Finity

We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing. 

The above quote is from a man called Charles Bukowski. Mr. Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski) was a German-American writer. His works were wholly written in America, and in english (he only lived his first 3 years in Germany before moving to the States). Mostly a poet, he also wrote some hundreds of short stories and 6 novels. While Bukowski was an influental man and wrote some very interesting pieces indeed, it is these particular lines I have here that are of interest tonight.

What, in my opinion, Bukowski tried to say with these words is: you're going to die. So am I, and so is everyone you know. How about we focus on something that will actually be of some worth?

Death is inevitable, yet people spend a humongous amount of their lives poring over what will happen. I atleast used to, and still do some nights, when it's dark and silent and I can't really sleep. While all this is theoretically interesting - is there a god? is there an afterlife? will I be born again? what is my conscience without my physical body? - it gets us nowhere. What will happen is that we will die. Until then, why should it matter to how we live our lives? After that, well, we shall see, won't we?

As long as stories and human history has existed, stories of death have been around. Ghost stories are one of the oldest stories still passing down from generation to generation. By telling stories of what happen to the dead we take a peek beyond the veil, and wonder what may lie in wait for ourselves.

Stories are important: they are a way to put sense and order into a reality that often seems chaotic and without any meaning or grasp. I personally love telling, hearing and retelling tales of splendor: to have been born a lyre or a skald would have been a dream come true. Stories told out of fear or to instill it have a place as well: those dark nights around All Hallows Eve, sitting in a darkened, old house with creaky floors and rattling windows, goosebumps on your arms and shivers running down your spine as you wonder if the little girl that fell into the chimney actually appears on the roof, or if the carlights you saw while arriving belonged to a tardy neighbor or the four youngsters that veered off the road so many years ago - these are the places where fear serves a purpose. Fear of death simply because you will die one day is counterproductive: all it will do is hold you back.

How much more could you attain by not fearing the inevitable? All of us will die, and most of us won't be able to do a thing to stave it one way or another. None of us will know better until we take those first steps on the new adventure. Hell, it will be scary. It should be: it's a treck without a return to the infinitely unknown.

But how about not fearing that moment until you seize it, and then making the best of it? How about making the best of each moment until then by not living in it's shadow? How about living while you still have the time?