I realized at IHOP I was going to die. I don't know if it was the people next to me on their way to a funeral or the non-surprising amounts of old people around me — probably the combination. Either way, it scared the shit out of me. I watched the elderly couple in front of me struggle to order their food and another couple slowly helping each other to their seats. I guess I’ve always known I was going to die. However, there are plenty of distractions in my life that direct my attention away from that fact. It usually isn’t until a funeral, a really moving film or a celebrity death that we start talking about death or thinking about it. Even then I feel we don’t really come to grips with the fact of our impending doom.
No matter what ideology or beliefs you have, we end up in the same place. We all end up in the ground, burnt up in a jar or scattered around in different schools and people by donation. So this topic is for everyone, no matter who you are. That's kind of crazy when I think about it considering the way I live my life. I hold grudges, get angry, let small things bother me and stress about the most irrelevant things. In no way am I saying I’m stopping that, no matter how hard I try I most likely will have a tendency to do those things. However, it seems funny that no matter how much death is around us we don’t really think about it too much. I drive by a cemetery almost everyday and there lie hundreds if not thousands of people who had stories that are just gone now. We have celebrities dying all around us and act like it was a crappy year that took them from us, when in reality it’s this thing called death that has been stealing people every second of every day.
We are so in love with being “better” people that we even use death as some sort of motivational tool. Death reminds us that life is too short, so we should live it more meaningfully. We realize our time is going to end on this earth, so we say make sure you are remembered for good things. Death reminds us to make every minute count! Yet at the end of the day, when we are lying on our deathbed (if we even make it to a death bed, not dying abruptly) will it matter if you lived more meaningfully? Will it matter what you are remembered for? Will it matter if you made every minute count? The reality is we most likely won’t live more meaningful, will still have bad things we are remembered for depending on who you ask and most definitely wont have made every minute count (have you heard of Netflix?).
So the question becomes what do we do with death? Instead of ignoring it and not dealing with it by covering up with more self-righteous sayings of living more meaningfully, what if we actually understand that we will be dead and everything about us will be forgotten? Sure, family and friends will remember you and your “good” deeds. But what about when they die? Even people that have been remembered over centuries, don’t have everything remembered about them correctly. We have heroes that are villains and villains that are heroes. Everything about you will be forgotten. Is there freedom in knowing that or just depressing thoughts to follow? I’m still deciding, but maybe there is grace in death. Soon the stress of keeping up with this world and it’s demands will fall away and our slate will be wiped clean as the memory of us slips away from the world’s grips.
