“Between Life and Death”, Bosslogic, Mar 12, 2021
¨When an individual experiencing mental turmoil is unable to deal with the inevitability of death, they may become fixated on their mortality, resulting in them losing focus on life itself.¨
Death will come to all eventually, whether it be a person, object, or even an idea. From dust, we came from, and to it, we will return.
Like it or not, it is one of the universal truths of this world.
Nothing is permanent. Things die, ideas fade, and memories are forgotten. Everything will, at some point, disappear, swallowed up by the mists of time.
…so what now? I mean, if everything I hold dear will disappear eventually, then what’s the point of even getting out of bed today? If each step I take brings me towards an open, empty, waiting grave, then should I just stop walking? Step back through that front door, and return to the solace of my room?
No.
I can’t just stay in my room all day, because lying in bed with too much time, and not enough to do, that’s when one is most prone to those types of thoughts.
You know the ones; no matter how loudly you play the music, or how dark the room is, like well-trained bloodhounds, they always seem to find their way into your mind. At times, their arrival is seemingly random, spawned from various thoughts; mundane thoughts about the miscellaneous that somehow wandered to the passage of time. Other times, they’ll come crashing in like a monstrous tsunami; submerging every waking thought in ice-cold dread, and settling into the deepest recesses of one’s mind, never fully evaporating. Always there, lurking in the back of your mind, stealing the air from your lungs until each breath is a desperate battle for a slight reprieve; a Herculean labor.
Outside it is, then.
Once I step through that door, I’ll be subject to a world where nothing is for certain.
Where each step, each thought, each word, each breath, could be my last.
But even if I don’t step out of that door, each second, minute, day, year that passes by could be my final, so I ask again; what now? What answer is there to this rhetorical question? Do I leave my fate up to chance? Seclude myself from the world, desperately hoping to prolong this tortured existence?
Or maybe…I could just live my life.
I don’t mean just existing, no. I mean living; living my life to the fullest despite the knowledge that one day, I’ll run out of sand. Who knows when my time will come? It could very well be the next second, minute, day, year; or maybe I already forfeited my life a long time ago. Riddle me this: What kind of life is that? One where every shadow or second leaves one shaking in their boots? How am I supposed to enjoy life, live it, if every second is spent miserably waiting for its end? If you ask me, it’s no life at all; it’s a pale imitation of what it could be.
Every journey has an ending, doesn’t it? Every well-worn path, open road, book, movie, series; they all have that final destination, that final curtain before the screen fades black, and all is silent. And in that quiet tranquility, all that lingers is a feeling, one almost indescribable.
Is it joy?
Regret?
Sorrow?
Melancholy?
Why do we feel like this? Because the journey has reached its conclusion?
Do we laugh?
Cry?
Applaud?
Celebrate?
Mourn?
About what?
The beginning,
or the end?
We’ve made it to the end, so why does it feel so empty?
Could it be something else? Maybe we don’t mourn the end; rather, we mourn the loss, the absence. We grieve for the fragility of those moments that we will never truly experience again. Once that final chord leaves the air, when the blooming brilliance of the flower finally wilts, we mourn their disappearance. After all, is it not the fragility of things that make them all the more beautiful? Is it not death that gives life meaning? That everything has an end helps us to appreciate them even more, be it the flowers in the ground, the clouds in the sky, or life itself. Everything exists in a delicate balance, almost as if by magic.
I don’t know what comes next, nor do I know what will happen in the next second, day, year, or century. But I do know that I’m going to use what I have left. Have you ever seen a glass sculpture? What a sight they are, so fragile, so delicate, that it seems like a single breath could cause it to crack. Do you know how they’re made? First, sand is taken, and it’s melted down. No longer can one tell one grain of sand from the other; instead, they’re one big, formless mass, waiting to be shaped, and given both life and purpose. Though the process is quite strenuous, it is worth every second.
Instead of counting the time I have left, mourning as the sand pools around me, I’ll make a glass sculpture.
I’ll exist in those brief moments of stillness and fragile beauty,
waltzing to the pulse of my heartbeat, as notes thread through the air, and flowers bloom.
And when my time comes, when my waltz stops, and the stillness shatters; when the air goes silent, and the last flower wilts,
I’ll face the final curtain, bow to the crowd, and take my leave.