Forget your birthday
On death and being
Life doesn’t move. I move. I move through life.
I wanted to forget that my birthday was in five days, because I’ve never forgotten my birthday before. It never crept up on me and I never unwittingly grew older. Although, that’s a lie.
We all unwittingly grow older every day. Do you think that you only grow older on a single specific day of each year? Don’t kid yourself. We wither every day. Every day we become a step closer to death and the grand finale of whatever it is that we call life.
I am a morbid person. I’ve come to terms with that. Death fascinates me, because it cannot be real. I cannot imagine death. I cannot imagine everything just stopping. Why would it stop? Life never stops. It goes on, even without me.
There’s a saying. A rhetorical question, more than anything else. “If a tree falls in the forest with no one to hear, does it still make a sound?” If life goes on after I’m dead, does it really go on?
Are these thoughts even deep, I wonder. I am just putting words together, connecting overdone thoughts. I am trying to make sense of it, so please bear with me.
If life goes on after I’m dead, does it really go on?
Usually, I never write for anyone but myself. I’ve read my own writings more than anyone else has. Would people even care about what I have to say, I wonder.
How would that conversation go?
Hello there. Hi there. My name is Cem. I write things. Well isn’t that nice? I’d like to think so, would you like to read the things I’ve written? Well, what the hell, why not? That’s so nice of you!
And then they read some of my paragraphs and sentences and words. And then they either say it’s all awful, or they just smile and nod.
That’s what people do. You can never get people to comment on anything if they like it:
Do you like that blouse? Yes, I do like it. What do you like about it the most? Pardon me? Yeah, what makes that blouse so likable? Oh, well, the colour maybe? Maybe? Well I don’t know! I just like it.
I am withering and dying everyday, but so are you. There isn’t enough time in this world to pay attention to whether or not people like my writings and, if they like my writings, what things in particular they like about them.
I am trying to put meaning into parts of my life, but I cannot, because my life is not a book or a movie. There is no purpose to my actions. There is no purpose to what happens to me.
In stories, everything has instrumental value. The hero will face whatever is thrown at them and will come out stronger. Or else, they will fail, and that will also shape their character.
But I am not a character. Truth be told, I probably am not even that interesting. I do not have fixed points in time to which I can point and say, “Ah, see that’s when I became like this.” No, I am still becoming.
In the vein of some Danish philosopher, we could say that I am making choices every second of my life and each one of these choices changes who I am. At the end of the day, though, the choices are inconsequential. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t matter. Nothing matters. Nothing inherently matters, maybe I should say.
But that doesn’t make sense. If life is meaningless, why live?
Let me tell you a little story. A man spends 48 hours, holed up in his house. He lies on his bed and wastes minute after minute, hour upon hour. He promises himself, I will do something tomorrow. Why? Who knows! He wakes up the next day — it’s well past afternoon. Maybe I can waste another day, he says. But no, he doesn’t want to waste anymore days. Why doesn’t he want to waste days? Did we not already agree — you and I — that life is meaningless?
That you can waste your time implies that time can also be used well. Every second you don’t use is a second that could have been spent doing something. The man could have looked up at the night sky, walked on the mountain, breathed the fresh air that smells green. He could have talked to her, asked her about her day. Maybe he could even see her — see her smile.
But he didn’t, did he?
Maybe she didn’t have time anyway, he tells himself and believes his own lie. No, he decided to do nothing, and now there he stands.
Every second you don’t use is a second that could have been spent doing something.
Nothing matters, true. But why should you care whether something matters or not? What is this endless search for meaning for? Why do you need anything to mean anything? Why do you want to have a purpose in life? Why do you want your life to serve a purpose? Can you not just live? Can you not just exist? Can you not just come to terms with your own existence and deal with your own becoming?
You see, all the time this man wasted was wasted, not because it was not used purposefully, but because it was not used at all.
The one thing that’s certain is that we all live and exist. These two are the only things that we cannot deny. I know I exist. I know you exist. I know that the man exists. I know that she exists. I know that the man cares deeply for her, and I know that his emotions really exist. These existences precede, succeed, supersede everything.
So… I am alive, I am living, but I am also slowly withering away. Such is life. If you consider it carefully, everything boils down to death — death and being.
I think that’s why I’m so fascinated with death — because I feel like it could be the exact opposite of whatever this life is. Life is everything, and death is nothing. Life is love, and death is nothing. Life is hate, and death is still nothing.
Actually, however, death is not the exact opposite of life. Death is the lack of life. Like light and darkness, sound and silence. Death is but a shadow of life — and not even that. My mind cannot grasp the nothingness, I suppose. But then again, there probably isn’t anything to grasp. And all the time I spend thinking about death is time wasted — time I could have spent living.
04/08/15
Montreal, QC
