Death?
Date: 16 August 2008
Listening: Hide and Seek // Imogen Heap
Announcements: new stock photos, 2 new wallpapers, new textures
Plug: Bear
, Catherine
Well, long time no updates. Sorry about that. My summer’s been pretty hectic.
I recently logged into a site that I am part of after a long absence. When I had left, a lot of people I knew were still there. But today I learned of my ignorance. While I didn’t know these people extremely well, I will miss them all the same. They are known as Lady Icey, Lady Silver[z], and Lady Brindle. They were the Shakespearean-talking Goose Force, and now they are gone. And one more, the one I will miss the most: Sparrow.
I learned today that her younger sister, Amanda, had posted about her long absence. The reason? She had apparently committed suicide and is now as dead as a rock.
…
Sorry, that sounded a bit bad. RIP Sparrow. You will be missed.
It got me thinking, though. The philosophical part of me just started to kick in. What is death? This question is not meant to spark religious controversy or scientific arguments or anything. It’s just simply me wondering.
The ancient Greeks had portrayed him as a god, Thanatos. Or something like that. In certain religions, you have an afterlife in Heaven or some kind of paradise place. There’s also the rebirthing theory, where your soul is reborn as another being on Earth and you forget everything that happened in your past life. Another one is where you die and your soul dies along with you and that’s the end of it.
Is death a name for moving on and leaving planet Earth? If it is, will you be magically transported to Jupiter or something? Neptune? Mars? Planet XYZQW? In that case, is Heaven a planet? Are you reborn on an alternate dimension of Earth?
So let’s say when you die you go to a paradise for good peoples. How would you find out if your best friend, who had died before you, was there? Or would they be waiting at the entrance for you, like the grandmother in Elsewhere? If you die at the exact same time as your neighbour Bob, would you two go wherever you go together?
I think one thing is clear, though. Whether you’re a hobo and you die alone in an abandoned alley in New York City or you’re a popular celebrity and you die in a room full of sobbing people, it’s only you who dies.
Everyone dies alone.
-- Ry