This surely hasn’t been my favorite topic to write – considering that I’m writing after almost two months, and keeping at the back of my mind that for me, a life is a place where you live as long as you ‘enjoy’ living. The moment it turns out to be a boring, maniacal despairing trot for a human being, life is over. And for someone who feels the way I do, it is difficult to muse over so-strange a theme as this one.
Strange, this event called death can actually bring out the very-best human qualities of a person. For instance, a person – decent in his ways, have happened to be nothing more than a mere passer-by in your life – dies. It is not necessary that he be your best buddy or go-to person, but even for a micro-second, we do feel something like – ‘how good a person he was’. Abruptly enough, good qualities of that man seem to do a round in your mind, flashes of memories fill your thoughts. Voice of that man seems to ring in your ears, and you recall almost all the minor conversations that you had with him.
Interestingly enough, a second before his death, presuming you did not expect him to die very soon, he mattered no more than the bird singing in the distant hills!
This is my first musings over death. Philosophers, by large, have their own views written down on paper and have large number of people pouring on them to understand, for me, however death was not a very significant thing to ponder over. It should come when it would come. Theories have galloped over the end of life, which they term as death. The reason, that aroused me to write such a thing was the death of an old school friend of mine, aged just 22!
As I just said, he mattered no more to me than a classmate – keeping in mind I’m not the kind of person who can be comfortable with anyone and everyone I find, it’s logical enough to accept that everyone, barring a few, were friends. Those few were my close friends! I knew nothing of him in recent weeks, except the tiny bits of information that you can squeeze out on being ‘Facebook Friends’, except maybe that he had recently fallen in love, and was carrying on nice and good with his girl-friend. Then yesterday, all of a sudden, I happen to know that he is dead.
The exact same thing happened to me as I stated a couple of paragraphs earlier. And that was when I actually learned, how this thing that I had always ignored, or treated as a trivial thing, or known to be unavoidable and something that-would-come-when-it-needs-to-come sort, can change your views towards a person altogether! Death can, all of a sudden, make a person the center of attention and can make him look of utmost importance – be it even for a split second. Imagine, would you be ‘happy‘ if your worst enemy really died? (I’m not speaking of enemies of life)
Some things actually ran through my mind after hearing this news.
Why on earth, did I never associate enough importance to death? Was it because I really found it too trivial, or because – I was afraid of it?
For Dust you are – and to dust shall you return
Does this quote – something that I have always avoided, make sense now?
This quote, in some fashion or the other tends to rub you off enthusiasm, and perhaps put on a melancholic cloak over your body and mind. No I’m not dust, I’m capable of almost everything in the world and I can and surely will do it when time will permit me. To dust shall I return, may be, but just as I said at the very beginning, it becomes meaningless after a point of time in your life to continue living. Once you have done your work for which you came to this mortal globe, it’s time that you wrap up and leave. And if your ‘work’ truly make sense, you would neither be ‘dust’ nor would you return to ‘dust’ after your death.
About Religions, the advaitic view seem to be the most appropriate as a definition or explanatory term for death – Neither was ever born, nor would anyone ever die. Man merely changes his form from one to another!