Yes this is another update. No I am neither being paid to write nor am I being held at gunpoint in order to write this. 2 updates in a single week is a big thing, it’s not happening frequently. Enjoy.
Someone told me to write about death. I could be ominous and generally dark but I’m going to talk about death and some random and weird things I know about death. There may be a few anecdotes. Also, these write ups will be short, get used to it, writing between exams is not really fun and I would not recommend doing it but here I am anyway.
So let’s talk about death.
Life essentially just boils down to death. It is, for all intents and purposes, a countdown to death. I read somewhere that all life is borrowed, someday it must be paid back in full. I did not fully grasp what it meant and it made sense to me at a very later part of life. In retrospect, death is so much more than that. There’s this Greek phrase, Elefthería sto thánato, that roughly translates to freedom in death, blame Google Translate for its horrific job and translating anything. A friend told me about this phrase, you know who you are, and when you die, you are released from the bondage of the human body, its troubles and its problems. Also, no I am not saying death is a solution.
Just think about it for a minute, the sheer might of death. The fact that you will never be able to speak or interact with a person again sends a chill down my spine. When someone dies, you often hear people say, “I just met him/her,” or , “I just saw him/her”. That just goes to show how baffling and astonishing death is. The more fascinating aspect of death, at least to me, is what comes after. It is the biggest mystery of mankind. Where do we go from there? Oblivion? After life? It is the beauty of death. Intriguing and scary all at the same time.
The Greeks took this crap pretty seriously. They placed a coin under the tongue of the deceased as fare for the ferryman who took the dead across the River Styx. The Norse believed dying with a weapon in their hands would mean Valhalla, feasting with fallen heroes and Odin himself, and riding out to face the end of the world, Ragnarok. I think these beliefs of an afterlife exist simply so that someone who is on their dying breath gets a sense of hope, perhaps even a chance at the next phase. Funeral rites didn’t even make sense to me up until a few years ago. My ‘love’ for the practicality of things blinded me to what funeral rites really brought to the table. The general understanding of a funeral to me was a way for people to come together and express their regret. They are so much more than that. After giving it a lot of thought and scouring articles and studies on the Internet, I finally understood. The funeral rites were a way of distracting people from being overwhelmed by the emotions of bearing a loss, and letting it reach them in stages. By allowing yourself to be busy with funeral rites, you let yourself put your mind off of the thoughts of pain and angst, and eventually into acceptance. Practical after all. Hehe.
There used to be this group of medical students in the 20th centuries, who used to meet up on Saturdays, like any normal college study group, to take turns flat lining in their college library. Flat lining, for anyone who does not know, is when there is no detectable electrical activity of the heart, as indicated by a flat line on the monitors. They were dying and then coming back to life. Now what you must be thinking right now is they are crazy whackadoodles, but no, think about it for a second. What if the result of this study actually came up with the answer to afterlife. There where movie adaptations made but I highly doubt they came close to the truth of the matter.
Just a bit of friendly advice, the next time you are trying to comfort someone who’s grieving the death of a loved one, just express your regret and that you are willing to help them. Don’t give them that “They’re in a better place” crap. No. Don’t give them hope. You don’t know that. At least that is what I would want.
To not end this on a mean note, I’d just like to say if you ever find yourself facing loss, hit me up, I reply in like 10 seconds because I have no life but also because I know what it is to grieve. I do not deal well with death so I understand you.
To everyone who put in their ideas on things I can write, I saw all of them and am planning to write stuff on each of them. Some may be more esoteric so writing them is easier, some will take longer just because I would prefer to read about those things first and know what I am talking about rather than pretend like I know and be an idiot. Criticism and reviews are much appreciated. That is it for this time :)
Also, there’s the private comment thing you can use to leave your thoughts.
Bravo Six, going dark.
