A Part Of The Human Experience

St Gallen, Switzerland, 2017

  Recently, I started reading again. For a good year, I'd say, I had almost completely stopped reading. Every time I picked up a book, I immediately placed it back on the shelf because I realised that I no longer wanted to read all these stories that kept on getting repeated in one form or another. They almost always ended the same way, and then it hit me, human life can only end in so many ways. What's important is what comes before the end. This in itself is no great epiphany but I feel as though we all need to be reminded of the fact that there will, at some given point, be an end. We need to be reminded of our acute mortality.

  Death can induce two very extreme reactions in most of us: It is either a very nebulously distant thing or it is something that influences most of actions on a daily basis. I have been on both ends of this spectrum. Both of these things have allowed me certain luxuries. While I was keenly aware of death, I noticed, I did things that I normally would never do with the mantra "Who the fuck cares?"
Then, recently, when "the end" became this thing that only ever came up in deeply profound conversations, when although aware of this concept of death, it didn't really register that I might one day die (sooner or later, hopefully later), I was confronted with this sense of having time, which in itself is rare.

  There has been a very short period, if ever, when I have been able to balance these antithesis, and I'm guessing, I am not the only one. We, as a race, need to be able to accept our mortality in a way that is healthy. We need to stop being so scared of death. Here, too, are two contrasting people: One, who are absolutely terrified of death, and two, who either romanticise death or constantly use it as an excuse. Again, an equipoise needs to be attained. You must be thinking, "Easier said than done," and it is true. It is hard.

  Human beings wouldn't have survived for so long if not for their perpetual fear of going extinct. I mean, there is a reason that mating is the most primal instinct of ours. Yes, love, but people constantly cheat on people they love with others. I'm not saying it is alright, but monogamy was never part of our lives until some society in the past decided it was. So, yes, the thought of death scares the living lights out of most of us and that is okay, as long as a voice in the back of our minds keeps reminding us that it is part of the entire human experience.