Death. It comes for us all. It’s our fate and our destiny. The great equalizer. I know this. I’ve known this as long as I can remember. I’m not one to run away from the truth, no matter how hard or difficult it maybe and yet when people around me die, I still have to ask myself why?
Why do we live if it is only to die? There’s a reason for this. It’s the reason I keep going to when death claims someone close to me. Death gives life meaning. If we lived forever than what would it all be for? Would it matter? Life matters because of death.
I’m not one for flowery sentiments. Religion, particularly Christianity with its platitudes about salvation are not for me. Maybe there’s a God? And a heaven? Who knows? There’s just the here and now. That’s all I know and all I need.
This is what I believe. Life and death are, like all pairs of opposites, interdependent. One cannot exist without the other.
I suppose my philosophy is a philosophy of fatalism. One is dealt the card they’re dealt with and that’s that.
I owe the existentialists a lot for shaping the way I think. They speak of how you’re thrown into life. This thrownness as they call it, forces you into a life situation, that you have no control over.
You’re born to a set of parents, into a family, nation, and period of time, that each have their own pathology. Your challenge is to find yourself within all of those setting, unearthing the potential self you have hidden within.
This gives me comfort because it doesn’t allow for any bullshit. Life is going to be hard, but at the end of the day, I can take it, because there’s a self-inside of me that transcends all the dirt and grime life is going to throw my way. I’m stronger than I think and so are you. We can take it one way or another.