When and Will I Die?

For whatever reason, I've thought a lot during the course of my life about me dieing. Not that I've lived a life surrounded by tragic deaths that would lend credence to my potentially morbid fascination with death; I'm just drawn to death in both theory and reality. Death is one of the most basic and essential components of human life, and yet it is reviled by many cultures and religions. Death, the horrible termination to the once enduring life, the bringer of sorrow to those who remain, the serial killer that hacks down everyone at the most tragic moments possible. Even when death brings an end to pain, it's still mourned.

I'm not saying it's easy to let go, because it's not. I'm an extremely sentimental person, and everytime someone dies I feel whole chapters of my life folding up and ending. My memories stretch back to even a young age, and when avenues of possibility are put on a permanent hold due to a death, I am sad. But then there's a part of me that doesn't believe people ever die. It's never truly clear where life begins, and you can debate it all day. I try to avoid much time on that. Instead, I believe life is a process, and that process is reality. I find it hard to believe that life ever truly began. If it began, there has to be a creator, and if there's a creator, that creator must be eternal and exist outside of time. If the creator exists outside of time, how can it interact with our reality?

To me it's rather simple. Reality is the god of itself, the creator being the created and the created the creator. Eternity exists in the sense that reality in all its infinite forms always existed and always will. Linear modes of thought and perceptions are not applicable here. Time is nonexistent at the most fundamental levels of reality, and is rather a measure of the rate of change. Time exists where there is motion, and reality is constantly in motion. But reality may never really move. If it's all things simultaneously, there is no change. Oddly enough, reality is all-encompassing enough that reality seems to change in the universe of consciousness inside each of our minds.

If there is a God, that God the collective consciousness of all minds, the resounding resonance of all thought bouncing off of each other in harmony, the echoing waves of which bounce back through reality shaping it in startling new ways. With time not being a hindrance, they sound across all of reality, changing past, present and future as we see it in our ways. I don't believe time can be static. Rather, it must reflect a dynamic shaping of events throughout reality playing off one in another in a grand game towards whatever goal. Ultimately, that goal is inconsequential. We live, we die, the end.

If you adhere to normal conceptions about death anyways. I know that I will one day die. If an accidental death doesn't kill me off first, the withering of my physical body (or even, though hopefully not, my mind) will force me to yield my sole bastion of existence in this material world. My neurons will cease to fire, my consciousness will fade, and all that of me that can be perceived in this reality will disintegrate into a dust that will ultimately become something else.

What happens after death is a mystery, which is clearly why it scares so many people. I can guarantee one thing that will happen after your death. Your constituent atoms will drift apart and form into something else. The matter that you borrowed for your brief yet long sojourn on earth will be leased out to someone or something else for awhile. Reality is in the process, and your body will be in the process of transforming into something new. The beautiful thing about reality is that for every end there is a new beginning. Though it may be frightening and new, it's usually beautiful. Some mountains must eventually die for the valleys, and rocks to the tide. Waters will forge their ways through the earth. If the earth had screamed and fought against water, the Grand Canyon would not exist, nor would the Nile and it's fertile lands, nor would the bulk of civilization.

Reality works through change, and resisting change is like fighting the ocean tide with a wooden stick. I find it easier to sit down on the shore and marvel at the patterns that waves leave over time, sand ripples and waves across stretches of beach. Every few hours, the ocean paints a new picture on the shore, but that picture is always changing, so it's never really done. It's also never really begun. It just always exists, constantly reinventing itself, striving for perfection and always achieving it by its continual search for something new.

When I die, I will decay. I couldn't care less about whether or not I'm buried. Ideally, my body could be put to good use. I don't know how, but I'm sure there's a way. And as for my consciousness? I figure if I have a mind now, I've always had one. Reality never really creates something from nothing; it creates anything from everything and everything from anything. It never started; it just always was. I believe my mind is that way. I don't really know or care whether or not I'll float up to some pearly gates or fall down to the burning gates. Really, I hope that reality will hit the reset button on me and put me in something new.

Maybe I'll become a tree, and spend my time reaching ever higher in a race to reach the sun. Maybe I'll surge through the earth as water, cutting my own path and reshaping entire continents and thus the world. Maybe I'll become a tiny little electron, darting from bonded atom to bonded atom maintaining the quantum integrity of our microscopic universe, and on good days, I'll manipulate quantum strangeness and be in two places at one time. Who knows?

Maybe if I'm really lucky, I'll become a creature of thought, existing at the intersections of conscious thoughts between individuals. Then I could be love on Mondays, bursting with energy as the thoughts of two lovers meet and take shape, forming a brilliant happiness within both their minds. On Tuesdays I'll be the reckless ambition that both creates and destroys empires, forcing the most unexpected, unwanted yet always interesting changes.

For Wednesdays, I'll be joy. Wherever there is happiness or ecstasy, I'll be there harvesting it, saving it up so that on Thursdays I can become sadness and find it wherever it is. Then I can share all the happiness I found with the dispirited, and bring new hope. Fridays I'll be in their dreams, and after awhile, I'll become them. In their dreams they'll create, and ultimately, I'll become their canvas. Then on Saturdays I'll become their energy and drive, so that they can make those dreams meet their reality, and even the farthest star becomes tenable in the grasp of their hopefulness.

Then, on Sundays, when their lives near their end, I can go to sleep with them as they shut their eyes for the last time, and wake up with them as they open their eternal eyes to the ultimate reality. Then together we'll go into a new week together, living as the raw and amazing emotion that makes human beings so wonderful. It will be fraught with ups and downs, but reality was never meant to be static. There is no life on a straight line, only monotony. Off that line lies the infinite and twisting paths of life, replete with joy, sadness, life, death, beginnings and ends and all sorts of frightening yet enchanting things. When I die, I don't want to rest. I want to dig into new layers of reality and shatter my old consciousness with crazy and unprecedented revelations. I want to come out of Plato's allegorical cave and cease to look at the shadow people that birth forced me to look at all my life. Life was great while it lasted, but so will this be.

People ask me why I obsess over death. Some days I think I'm beginning to understand why. If there is beauty in birth, in the cries of a child shortly after it meets the world beyond the womb, in the helplessness and innocence of a baby who is on the verge of its explosive growth, in the smiles and laughs and cries and yells of its fledgling consciousness, then I think there can be beauty in death. With the exuberance that comes with the fullness of life in all its flavors and variety comes the sleep and transition to something new. I'm not going to fear it, nor am I going to rush toward it.

I'm going to relish every day I have of this wonderful life, and charge towards every goal I can conceive of. I want to have children who can carry on my spiritual legacy and see the end of each day as the start of a new one, and the end of each life as the start of a new one. I want to have a wife/soulmate who can I share my ups and downs with, who I can grow with. We will both be the sunlight that the other reaches towards, opening our leaves so that we can bask in each others' love, if only for awhile. I want to share my gifts with people and in turn be blessed by being able to see their awesome gifts and talents. I want my soul and ego to shed its isolated shell and open up the greatness that exists in every mind. It may hurt sometimes, and it may even kill me, but nothing worth having need come easy or free.

If I die tomorrow, that's okay. Granted, there are many things I'd like to accomplish first, but I'll find new things in my new existence. If I die 60 years from now, almost 80 and having lived 10 years longer than I predict I will, great. Hopefully those years were filled with all the ups and downs that make the human experience so wonderful and so frightening. Either way, when my mind's eye closes on this life and dreams before I move on to another, I want my last dreams of my old life to be filled with memories of the wonder of this one. Then, as I near my new genesis, the new day on my unending reality, I want them to fade into something new and unforeseen. That way, when I open my new eyes upon an unknown reality, my old memories won't hold me back as I tear into this new reality. Rather, like all things, they'll hang at the center of my soul, waiting for that inevitable day in eternity when they too, like flowers waiting for spring, will be able to bloom again.

Random Ramblings of No Significant Significance

Though I avoid randomly talking about my life here because I prefer to remain topical, sometimes I just can't help but revert to ego-centrism here. So forgive me please, as today, I talk about my summer, the present, and looking to the future.

I spent all summer working 10-15 hours a day, 5-6 days a week at Busch Gardens as a supervisor in one of the food shops. For whatever reason, I thoroughly enjoyed the job. I loved the people I got to work with to death. From day one I started off with some vivacious and energetic Filipino and Thai workers. Later in the summer they were replaced by a number of Polish, Russian and eventually Turkish workers. I worked with a broad variety of people that included high school and college-aged Americans. It's the kind of job diversity you have a hard time finding in many places in the country.

More than that, I found the work very satisfying. I got to feel like I improved on a number of things during the summer. When Zuzana (a Slovakian co-worker of mine from the previous year) arrived, we worked as co-supervisors to make improvements in the shop that needed to be made last year. We set up routines that had never been established before, as well as determined a method of doing orders that resulted in us not running out of stuff all the time (which was sadly the case last year). I was always able to set goals and work hard to reach them.

Most of all, I loved the weird social interactions I was able to participate in due to my job. There were the random conversations with customers that came with being a cashier, there were the talks with guests that buy beer (for whatever reason, beer-purchasing guests are more inquisitive and talkative...oh wait...), and there were times when I had to handle irate guests. The greatest social interactions were the ones with my co-workers. I had more fun with some of these people than I'd had in years. Going to the international village (where all of Busch Gardens international workers lived) was always fun, especially since all the Russian and Filipino workers were absurd chain smokers and drinkers.

The day to day occurences within the park always lent themselves to random and new scenarios creating a work environment that always had something new to offer. My work never felt dull or repetitive because I could always find something new and interesting to do each day. I learned how to run and manage things that extended beyond my duties as a supervisor. In many ways I became an odd sort of errand boy at times, running random errands that had no relation to the functioning of my shop. I ultimately didn't mind as it afforded me an opportunity to learn how to do new things and meet even more people in the park.

Now, as I sit here back at school, I miss the physical exhaustion that I was rewarded with every day. One of my favorite and weird little thrills was working 13 hours and then sleeping for 4 hours before working another 12. I learned to live through exhaustion, but I also learned to love exhaustion. In exhaustion, I found some quiet from my ceaselessly noisy mind. I also just felt very satisfied after a long day of work. Most days now, I feel board and useless, lacking any immediate task with which to occupy myself. I'm excited about returning next summer. Even though that job never paid that much (at least not enough for how much effort I put into it), it was a great experience for me.

Since getting back to school, I decided to add a major in Hotel, Tourism and Management. Coupled with my philosophy degree, I have quite a deal more job opportunities that will be available to me after I leave college. I'm excited at the prospect of being able to work even more in the future, but I'm also frightened by the fact that for the first time in over a year, I no longer just want to teach philosophy. A part of me wants to work for a business running certain operations in the service industry. I couldn't tell you why this excites me, but it does. Looking to the future, I have the opportunity to make money by working with and over people in an effort to help them form self-sufficient teams. I want to establish certain things so that I can create good models of customer service. Ultimately, I want every guest who comes through my establishment to leave feeling like they had the greatest quality possible.

I've gone from an aspiring academic to a semi-aspiring academic with ambitions of real work in a real industry. Though the thought disturbs me to some extent, I'm excited and can't wait to start taking classes in my major.

Random rambling done, insignificant significance not yet signified...or something. Beats the hell out of me, it's 2:30a.m. and I'm going to bed. Good night/morning.