Momento Mori

Original Post Date: Oct 8th, 2008

We all die.

Lots of poetry about this fact. A lot of cliches. Fancy words to glorify that which may be nothing more than a giant stop sign. Lots of interpretations about it - whether it really is the end, or whether it's a new beginning. Whether it is relative to your beliefs or relative to your hopes. Whether it's about entering into a permanent dream or finally truly waking up. Whether worlds of philosophy, art, and pure, real Romeo and Julliets can be realized within it or whether it all simply boils down to a cold corpse. It is, unsurprisingly, a subject and source of near infinite imagination.

Both die-hards and die-nows are unified by the concept. To be risque, suicide thinkers in this sense are irrational: the will to die is the only will in the world that will be, without a doubt, inevetiably fulfilled without any required effort on the part of the willer. No need to consciously choose it. And the die hards, who want to live their life to the fullest, get their cake too. Not wanting to miss a single thing, they can fulfill the idea of crashing out of reality and into the Pearly Gates saying "Wow! What a RIDE!" because they know that no matter how great the journey, there IS a destination. We all get there. There's no other self-evident truth like it.

My father, in his wisdom, utters a most useful cliche when it comes to life: we get to choose whether we wait out the clock. We can sit around and twiddle our thumbs, or we can go out and have fun.

Problem is, I feel really comfortable in waiting rooms. Really comfy.

I mean, I can do the fun thing; in the past couple of years I've discovered that my soul can laugh so hard that my heart hurts, that I can fall into romance faster than I can fall in lust, and that I can love so incredibly, indescribably deeply it's divine (which, for an athiest, is quite something, let me tell you!). I've discovered that I really like drinking, dancing, talking, laughing, being around friends, and living like EVERYONE'S watching. I can do the fun thing.

But it's a thing. And I do it once in a while. It's not where I naturally rest my rump at the end of the day. I tend to be one of those guys who, when the day's had its fill, he sits down in his chair with his ticket number in hand waiting to be called. I got my crossword puzzle of dreams beside me. Sometimes I fill it in. Sometimes I start a new one. But I always have one.

You can buy them anywhere, in society today. Crossword puzzles of dreams. They sell them in Thailand. Word searches of new worlds. They sell those in France. They've even got Sodukos of some-days in most colleges and universities now. And I tend to feel more comfortable filling them in than anything else. I'm an addict, really.

I can't really end in saying that that's all going to change. I've done that so many times that I earnestly don't trust it any more. However, I can end in saying that I feel something a little different. There's something about realizing that, no matter what you do, you're guaranteed the same ending. It's not so much comforting as it is inspiring:You can't really screw up living. I feel something a little different. It's simmering. Bubbling. Coming to a boil. And, sooner or later, I'm going to find out what happens when a soul laughs even harder, and what love is like even deeper.

We all live.

- Z