Why do humans fear death? Is it the fear of the unknown, the thought of losing everything and everyone you care about? Some of us aren’t afraid to die, and I think that speaks to an entirely different state of mind. Independent of what side of the fence you sit on, we all contemplate the idea of death.
What’s fascinating to me is that humans yearn to create things that outlive them. Is this an act of denying death its power over us? I’d like to think that we can have some way of living on after we pass to the other side. Not in the sense that there is an afterlife, but that part of us lives on in those who knew us in life. Family is important in this regard for certain, your children will know more about you than most other people ever will and they will carry that torch forward.
I have personally found interest in creating pieces of art, writing, music, and collections of my thoughts that I hope to one day serve as a window into my soul.
Being forgotten
No doubt at some point in the future I will be forgotten. My children will know best of me, followed by my nieces or nephews. In the next generation, my grandchildren and their families will hopefully think highly of me and know who I was, but by no full amount that my own children did. It’s hard to know what extent my writings being preserved on the internet holds up for future generations of my family and others. By the point that I am gone and my children as well who else is there to remember me? Even if I live to create or achieve some great thing, will people who learn about me actually know me or just some distorted perception of who I was.
Like I said earlier, video, photos, and writings all on the internet could end up changing how we view people historically. I think about great people that lived 100+ years ago and it’s difficult to really know what kind of person they were outside of what other people said. After 1000 years it’s practically impossible to even be able to relate to the lives these people lived and what they were like. Culture, technology, and ways of life change so much and we simply can’t imagine who these people were and what they thought.
My Outlook
Depending on how you interpreted what I said here, you could imagine this outcome to be quite depressing. I don’t think it necessarily has to be though. We need to decide for ourselves if this is something to be concerned. Can we look back on our lives at the end, and be satisfied with what we’ve done?
It amazes me that I am sitting here writing this and sharing intimate thoughts with the world that could eventually be read by countless people, or more likely… no one. This doesn’t bother me. If even one person read what I wrote and it caused them to think differently or get an insight into my own mind, then my mission is worthwhile. At the same time, countless others will never write an intimate thought that is read by another soul and I find that to be quite tragic. I hope that more people will find it worth their time to do exactly this.
Anyway, I’m not sure what the goal in me writing any of this was, other than to just share some of my thoughts with the world.
I suppose that is the point though.