Death's Truth Brings Out Our Own Truths

    As our time on earth comes to a close, all of us must come to face the impending fact of our mortality in a way that we have never done before. In saying this I can clarify that what I say in this blog may not stay the same by the time I reach that period of my life. These are only the words of a naive seventeen year old boy who has seen less of the world than the average goose, so take them with as many grains of salt your heart desires.

    During my seventeen years of experience on this earth, I have thought many times over the value that life holds. About why we even care about the things that happen around us. The people we meet, the sights we see, the rides we seek. Being raised as religious, I have had the luck of not being faced with a seemingly meaningless void that a god would fill. However, I still think about why God exists. Of course, from there you get the answer that God would be existence itself, but the barrier for human understanding ends there. Why does existence exist? Well, in the Bible Jesus answers this in a way by saying "I am who I am". So, in a humorous way, life's value is rendered quite neatly by the Italian American Mafia: "it is what it is." We are all here, and inherently we care about our existence (Almost nobody in a healthy mental state wants to truly die). And if we care because there is a force of will behind it all? Why bother any further than that? Go with the flow at that point.

    Now, beyond finding meaning in being alive, there is a second step to the process of truly living. That second step is to know your purpose. Other than figuring out the first step, finding one's purpose is different for every single person who looks for one. All of us are different people, with different viewpoints and preferences. I cannot speak for anyone else at this point in writing, so everything that follows this is my own purpose as I see it at seventeen years old. By the time I die, I believe that there are three things that would have to happen before then in order to give me my most peaceful death.

    I hope that I would have found a way to support myself and a family that I start with work that is rooted in my passions. Thinking pragmatically I would be fine with anything that involves creative writing in any way, but the true dream of mine is to become a successful published author. As someone who is creatively inclined instead of inclined towards conscientiousness, I feel horribly crushed whenever I work without mental satisfaction. That is why whenever I imagine myself working an office job in say, accounting, among cubicles in front of a screen, I shudder in horror. I almost all the time look at money when it can secure me a comfortable living, and never have and never will strive to rise to the top of the world. Instead I wish only to be able to pursue my own passions in the arts. I believe that humanity can benefit from recognizing values such as these and encouraging the monetization of these types of dreams, and not stifling them in favor of a "you should do something realistic" mindset. It is only realistic to make more money off of business and STEM than the humanities and arts because we as a civilization made it that way.

    The second thing I want to have by the time I die is knowing that I have interacted with people from all facets of life around the world. Of course, I won't be able to meet people from every life path, but a good range will be enough for me. I don't want to be trapped in a bubble for the rest of my life, remaining ignorant about the world around it. The collection of knowledge and understanding about world cultures and perspectives is one of the healthiest ways to enrich your own, and with that knowledge you will be able to recognize patterns and behaviors detailing things about human civilization that would only remain secrets to you otherwise. Humanity as a whole should strive for this, regardless of what I said earlier about these being my preferences, because ignorance is a disease that has poisoned so many. Humans hate what they do not understand, and countries and leaders have used this for their advantage in things like war propaganda for centuries. Dehumanizing people makes killing them easier no? Ignorance breeds fear. Fear breeds hatred. And hatred breeds conflict.

    My last wish for the end of my life is to have worked to hone my mind, body and spiritual life to the best of my ability. To be more specific, this desire includes keeping my mind healthy through good stimulation like reading, healthy discussion, and research, keeping my body healthy by good exercise and diet, and keeping my spiritual life healthy by maintaining my moral values through good practice of my faith. These things are important to me because as parts of my own person that will never go away, I have an intrinsic obligation to take care of them. Yes, yes, this is one of my spiritual values and that is one reason, but there are others which are also very relevant. For example, if I leave these obligations to rot over the years, I won't only just have my daily life and experiences impacted, I will also face my failures straight on at the end of my life. Like I said before, these are things I can never get rid of, because they are either physically attached to me or will resurface once I confront my mortality. If I abandon them until then, they will become reminders of a wasted potential, sending me into a spiral of self loathing and depression.

    On a brighter note, I would like to be remembered by those close to me after I pass away as a negotiator. A peace maker. An intermediary. Someone who is open to any and all discussion and will seek to confront any trouble with talking before fighting. This is meaningful to me because it is a quality that eliminates the need for strife and hatred, revealing that there was never any need for discord in the first place. I said before that so many of humanity's problems arise from ignorance, and being an intermediary and promoting a healthy, knowledgeable approach is exactly how to combat this. Our species knows no bounds when it comes to pure stupidity and ignorance, however, so this fight will be a long and hard one.