Thoughts on death and mortality
The first observation that I had, was after the death of Paul Walker. Whilst the majority of people were sending their thoughts and prayers, there was this minority of intellectual beings,who criticized the rest of the world for lamenting the death of a celebrity but not not caring a dime for those thousands of kids in Africa who die of starvation every year. Although this statement was logically correct,but something in this just felt fundamentally wrong..and of course, life is filled with competition, deaths should be left alone.
Through experience, I have realized that indifference is worse than hatred. But unfortunately,the human psyche is mostly developed that way. We are indifferent to each other, till we get to know each other. That’s the same reason, why it’s difficult for us to mourn the unknown and the faceless than someone with a known face. That’s the reason why we might be equally indifferent when in history we read about the deaths of soldiers and kings alike; and also, I daresay, the sacrifices of various freedom fighters, scientists, philosophers in every single culture that has ever existed in the wake of human race. They were before our time. Though they might have touched our present lives in countless different ways, but their existence still isn’t palpable to us. We can imagine but can never witness the dreams of a soldier from World War II to safely return home to meet his new born, we cannot perceive that they were humans with their own hopes and insecurities,and that they shared this same Earth,though in a different time-line.
I couldn’t relate to the deaths of David Bowie, Prince or Michael Jackson but the death of Chester Bennington, shook me to the core. Why is that? I have ‘known’ him, as simple as that. What David Bowie meant to the previous generation, Chester Bennington meant to us. Though you have never met someone in person, you still know their voice, sounds that had fueled your own angst filled teen years and until this day, when you realize that that voice is gone now.
Funny thing is, you don’t feel your age. Surely, you’ll find those grays and wrinkles and there will always be well-wishers who want you to settle, have kids and whatever intrinsic fabric that bind this society together, but age creeps up at these moments, when your childhood heroes vanish, when the only way to know that they ever existed is through the records, pictures and every moment captured of their time on this blue planet..and the realization dawns upon you, that one day those pictures will be yours and if you are incredibly lucky, you will live in someone else’s memories.
