The face of death!

Something I wrote..comments welcome...

THE FACE OF DEATH

Why, do you think, is "death" such a sinister word? Why is the word itself thought of as something evil, taboo, scary, unlucky, a bad omen? Death, essentially, means and signifies an end- an end of a life, of a thought, of an emotion, of an idea, of a belief, of a hope, of a tradition, of anything that had once been 'born'. This brings us to the more crucial question of the necessity of “death” and “birth”. Birth means a fresh arrival, of a new life, a new thought, emotion, or idea- almost always a moment of joy and celebration, and is important for any civilization to exist. All things, good or bad, must and do come to an end. Change is an unchangeable law of nature; the only constant factor about our world is change. Which means it's imperative that the old be continuously replaced by the new, the stale by the fresh, and the redundant by the useful. Whatever has outlived its utility ought to be discarded and replaced by a better, fresher, more versatile, improved version! Time does not freeze, and unless and until that happens the existing shall continue to decay, creating a void all the time that must be filled by a new generation. Darwin's law of "Survival of the fittest" does more than just look good in evolution textbooks. It applies everywhere, not just to the life and death of an individual organism, but to every realm of our lives and infact everything that can ever be said to have taken birth, including love and emotions! Thus it follows logically that for there to be an influx, there has to be some amount of constant outflow. Which brings me back to my foremost question-given that birth is essential, it implies that death is as much, if not more, essential too. Then why still is death considered scary, undesirable and gloomy? Why does no one want to see the face of death, and hardly anyone knows what it looks like? Lets try and face the answers with some examples.

A dynamic mind might have produced an extremely brilliant idea today, but sooner or later the idea will die- in the sense that it'll inevitably cease to be as brilliant, as applicable, as useful and as feasible as now, with the changing times. Henry Ford's black cars might have made him a millionaire in the era they were introduced by him, but if someone used exactly the same concepts today, his business will fail badly. What’s not inevitable though, is the death of the mind where it was born, although unfortunately it is highly likely. It’s entirely possible and plausible to continuously rethink and innovate an existing enterprise so as to keep it 'alive', but very often the glory of a local success gives birth to stillness in the mind, a reluctance to innovate further, as an example of which is the fact that the Ford cars are no longer the market leaders. It is clear then, that if any one out of the reluctance and the dynamism manage to survive, the other must die. And now, it's not hard to see whose death would we rather mourn, and whose death is, weird though it may sound to be used as an adjective for death, is rather a cause of celebration!!!

To probe further, consider this question: What is the reason that a lot of people today, especially the youth are highly probable to grumble and frown at the very mention of the word "tradition"? You and I are highly likely to talk of traditions and rituals as illogical, irrational, ancient shackles that try to bind us. A little lateral thinking though, brings to light a rather startling fact that we the youth, the so-called rational, modern and contemporary also follow and create innumerable traditions of our own without even realizing. Not only that, as a matter of fact our parents and grandparents have done the same, and so shall our children and grandchildren. The only thing that's changed is that maybe for our grandparents celebrating a particular festival with elaborate outfits, sweets and meals was glamour and the wife's waiting for her husband over dinner was romantic, contemporary and happening! To many of us this may sound a bit as impractical, show-off, uselessness and humbug. While at the same time, we also blindly follow various contemporary, happening, romantic traditions of our times like gifting roses and chocolates on Valentines' Day! Style and glamour today might mean gelled hair, beer mugs and discotheque floors to a lot of people, and maybe 20 years down the line, it would mean shaved head with erotic tattoos on them and jackets that opened backwards to the quintessential youngster. Sounds absurd? Well, ask an average sexagenarian what he feels of your hair gels and your favourite leather jacket! For centuries, every generation has dismissed its preceding ones as narrow-minded, rigid, orthodox and shortsighted, and the future ones as immature, stupid, valueless and naive! You may call this "generation gap"...

...I call it the fear of death- the fear of accepting the death of the present, the fear of facing the inevitable long-drawn conclusion of anything and everything that exists today, that we feel we own, belong to, and love, including ourselves, which is the fact that one day it'll become irrelevant, outdated, unimportant and superfluous! Being broad-minded is often misinterpreted as just having liberal views, more correctly it's a willingness to accept diversity and change from the past to present to the unseen future, with a continuous application of though and foresight, and a consistent endeavour for the overall betterment of the society. Traditions are loathed when they're imposed, and the fact that they need to be imposed means that they're not relevantly and comfortably acceptable by the subject, in their current form. Now every contemporary 'tradition' sounds perfectly reasonable and convenient. But the moment the society satisfies itself with this status analysis, that's when it starts becoming otherwise, that's when it becomes a rule and is passed on like that. What dies is critical thinking and flexibility, and what's now born is stagnation in the society, which worsens further until the day someone dares to think fresh and that's when the struggle begins. For the fresh to come in, the old has to die but the propagators of the old who cannot battle their own fears and inflexibility, start battling the new. Such struggles have been known for centuries, but the way I look at it, it’s a battle fought because of a fear for survival, for the sake of the survival of that very fear!

In simpler words, the concept of death itself is simply a fear- a fear of the unknown. We have the tendency to attach ourselves to the present because the definite (as-perceived, though not necessarily correct) knowledge of ourselves and our world around gives us a strange sense of security and comfort, and accordingly, we adjust ourselves to the point of maximum convenience. What also sets in along is inertia, a resistance from within us towards any kind of change. This resistance primarily stems from a fear with regards to change and its impact on the way we know life to be, a fear rooted in our own lack of faith in our own capabilities to be able to adjust to the change and its impact, because somewhere within, we’ve allowed our thoughtfulness to wither, our agility to die and our adaptability to diminish- all the ingredients of what I call “the spirit of living”. What we forget is we’ve done all that before, so we may or may not, but certainly we can! The change in any case is as inevitable as the flow of time and eventually when it comes, it’ll solely depend on whether we’re able to rekindle the spirit within us and live once again, or not.

Thus is reality, we die the day we let this fear of tomorrow kill our spirit of living, and resign ourselves to its mercy which, ridiculously but quite truly, is the prime reason why people attach a fear to death and call it gloomy, evil and unlucky. When people mourn another death, it’s not just because of the grief of losing a loved one, but also partly because it reminds them of their own inevitable end. The inescapable fact, my dear friend, is that life goes on, as certainly as the fact that one day it’ll come to an end like all things, good and bad. Death is not to be feared; only the fear of death is. Because unless someone challenged an old brilliant idea with a fresh thought, a newer one will never be born. Unless old traditions died and newer established, the society would stagnate and eventually disintegrate. Unless old emotions died to give way to new ones, the words love, care, sorrow, despair and hope, the word ‘life’-they’ll all lose their meanings. Unless people died, there’ll be no place to accommodate the offspring and the world will be a haven of disease and decay. Unless I died, my life won’t acquire its true complete meaning. So I do not fear death, just the fear of death which if born inside me might prevent me from living completely all the moments of my ‘life’ in its truest spirit until the very moment when my senses gave way. Face your fears, and the face of death shall no longer scare!

“I fear not tomorrow,
for I have seen yesterday
and I love today…"