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Sunday, July 06, 2008

Is there death after life?


Now that's a better question than, "Is there life after death?" It doesn't presuppose that you die first (which technically means you cease to exist) and then wonder if you go on living (a paradox). So the real question becomes do we die after we live or does death really exist??

Merely semantics, I'm sure some people think. But as a writer, words are my mathematical formulas and they have to add up properly or they are just a series of letters strung together.

I don't want you to think that I am preoccupied with death. I firmly believe that we should be preoccupied with life. It's just that nagging question of the afterlife that pops up when the spectre of our mortality rears it's ugly little head.

I wouldn't really want to live forever. I think it be frustrating to eventually have to say, "Been there, done that," to just about every suggestion. I don't mind doing things I like over and over, but eventually even fun things can grow stale if there isn't something to break up the monotony.

Perhaps that is what death is. It's something to break up the monotony of living. It is a reasonable theory. But it's flaw is when you ponder the tragedy of a young person or a child dying. That breaks my heart. It puts death back into the random, senseless realm. And if death has no rhyme nor reason, how can life?

Sometimes I feel as though my thinking processes are patterned after a dog chasing his own tail. I am a writer/philosopher chasing his own tale.

But perhaps it is the pondering of death that holds the clue to it. If we live and die and poof...that's it, where does the collective knowledge and experience that permeates our DNA come from? I mean, one person can only theorize about death for so long before they die. So how is that theorizing passed on so that the next person pondering death doesn't have to start from scratch?

Damn you, tail...tale!

2 comments:

Karen said...

Um...is this a trick question or am I just being dense again?

Time said...

Just semantics. The question comes down to does death really exist.