Death

Death is a life’s change event. It sneaks up on you and out of no where changes your whole world. Everytime we lose someone, a part of us is torn away. When a death occurs, you realize the true importance of life. Our everyday concerns seem mundane and futile in front of death. It makes you want to break free from all the shackles put on you by responsibility and live without any boundaries. It makes you realize how small you are in this world. And mercilessly it just stands there laughing at you and your immortality because it is eternal.

I really despise death. It leaves you hollow. Something that you can surely survive without, but for the rest of your life that piece of you would always be missing. It’s like the dark, better to avoid it than to confront what’s inside it. I don’t think death is hard for those who die. Another adventure perhaps. But for those of us who’re left behind, it sucks. But what sucks even more is knowing that life will move on. People would grieve and then all will be forgotten eventually. Because that is the harsh reality of life, it goes on.

Personally, death would be interesting. My curiosity to find out what happens after we die is far greater than my fear of death. That is not what I am worried about. What concerns me is the death of someone close to my heart. I know how obvious this sounds. But when I lost my parents, I was really young. After their death, nothing affected me for a while. I didn’t shed a tear on my grandmother’s death and I was really close to her, because I thought the worse was over. I thought that I could never value anyone as much as my parents in my life ever again and so I would be indifferent to death. And I was right to an extent. Death doesn’t affect me, it’s the suffering that it leaves behind that breaks my heart. I never wept at my grandmother’s death because we had been expecting it for years. She was sick and in pain and death only relieved her pain. And I think that’s how it will always be. About a year and a half ago when I had recently gotten a Tumblr, I wrote something about how I didn’t understand people who considered suicide. I thought such people were weak and pathetic, but now I understand why. Death relieves the pain. It’s blissful, if you may.

‘We’re drowning in information and starving in knowledge’-Rutherford D. Rogers

A sixteen year old high school student, in her junior year, wakes up to the screeching alarm clock and prevailing stress of her AP classes, with her mind mourning over the colossal amounts of information it has to preserve. The human mind perceives knowledge based on observations and what it engulfs from the surroundings. So basically it has to be fed something, like wise every other organ in human body, to synthesize something. But the information itself is useless unless catalyzed by creativity.

Now when that sixteen year old spends four hours trying to memorize Causes of the American Revolution, her mind will start to wear off. After that, no matter how hard she tries, she will end up not learning anything. This leads to a question; why is their so much pressure on human brain? Why is it that she has to spend so many hours straining her brain just to remember some facts which she will forget by the next day when she can utilize the same amount of time in learning something less stressful and more knowledgeable? This continuous stress on an ambiguous mind leads to the severe abhorrence in students towards education. The dreadful memorization contributes to apathy for knowledge hence no one craves to learn. The repetitive failure because of not being able to reiterate piles of information replaces the profound desire for learning something one wishes for. And this results in lack of appreciation of knowledge. That very teenager, who although will do her best on every test and will go with the flow, will never witness the magnificence of what she is being taught. The beauty behind the mindset of people in that century will be a stranger to her since she doesn’t have time to ponder over such ‘non-beneficial’ thoughts. And when a growing mind doesn’t have time to think and be creative, the world that trails ahead is a sad world.

In 1984, George Orwell creates a world of imprisoned thoughts. He invents this imaginary character, Big Brother, who is basically the god of a certain society and controls everything that is going around. He implants theories in people’s minds, theories such that if enforced a person would be willing to believe that “War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength”. Although the society has deep information regarding what’s going on in the world, altered version however so, it still lacks imagination. Human mind has to be fed really inauspicious ideas about life indeed to trick it against thinking. “ThoughtCrime” as stated in the book against any intellect that dares to think outside the given perimeter is punished. The amount of information thrown upon us creates the very same perimeter, except maybe we are not banished for thinking by the government.

The sea of information is a misnomer to starve that sixteen year old brain from knowledge. The load of that data tires the brain creating a diversion from real issues. This diversion leads to creation of a biased opinion in that mind since it runs short on the correct ‘food’ of thought. It lacks enough knowledge to form an unbiased opinion therefore leading to a large majority having similar beliefs. A technique used by politicians to dictate people’s lives without actually being accused of a dictator.

It’s about 2 am and the sixteen year old still loathes what follows the next day. Not because she despises knowledge but because her brain is leaking facts. She awaits some sort of an epiphany to balance out the load on her brain, but alas she drowns in the ‘knowledgeable’ information.

2000-2010

Hmm this was probably the worst & the best decade for me. I lost four very important people in my life and those days, now that I look back, were terrible for me. Probably my darkest days and even though I learned so much about life from those days I wish to never revisit those days/memories. I think there was way too much sadness the first like eight years? But it got so much better. I learned three most important things a person could have: Patience, Love and Fortitude. Words would fail me if I begin to describe the important of these three things in life but here’s my attempt.

Patience. So important to just survive. Patience is when you know the other person is wrong but you still hear him out hoping that he got something right. Patience is hoping for the rainbow after the rain. Patience is bearing out your pains and sorrows in belief that your future will be better. Patience is giving your mind a little kick when it becomes too narrow to engulf other’s beliefs. Patience is in a teacher explaining something to his student over an dover hoping that he would understand a tiny part of it everytime. But most importantly patience is calming that storm of anxiety in your heart which otherwise is huge enough to destroy you.

Love. One of the most important concepts known to humanity, an idea that’s over rated but it’s not, a feeling that is written about all the time but very few actually find it. I never believed in love, obviously I was too ‘young’ to or maybe too delusional. My idea of love was some fairytale-prince-meets-princess story, and yes I still do believe in that call me a fanatic all you want. What I didn’t realize was the true meaning of love. Love is simple. It sees no boundaries. Religion, culture, race, sex, ethnicity, social status, age, looks, language-all these words are meaningless. It exists in trivial things like making funny faces in front of an infant to make him stop crying. It exists in great things like taking a bullet for someone else. It works against hatred. It prevents people from falling apart completely. It brings hope. It rejuvenates one’s soul. Love creates you. Love has enough power to completely shatter you, and we name that power hatred. Love is not delusional. The idea of having someone who cares for you is not plastic. Heck wanting someone who wants you back is not clichéd. Love is not over rated, in fact love is rare. No matter how much you deny it, we all are in love. We all seek for love in different forms. Tell me something, tomorrow if you run someone over won’t you feel something for that stranger? Won’t you help him out? Even if you’re too scared to, won’t have that lump of guilt in your throat? That guilt is love, love for humanity. Love for humans. Proof that there is a bit of humanity in you. But the reason why we are not able to find love is that people assume since it’s simple it should be easy. No one’s willing to work hard for it. No one cares enough to fight for it. No one thinks it’s worth giving up for.

Fortitude. Probably my favourite word from this language. The power to stand up every time you fall. Do you have any idea how immense this power is? Fortitude is knowing that the whole world thinks of you as a failure but proving them otherwise. fortitude is knowing you won’t make it but having enough courage to see it through no matter what. Fortitude is extending your limits and hoping your this fall was the rock bottom and everything would be up from now. Fortitude is enjoying this roller coaster called life. Fortitude is having every reasonable excuse in the world to give up yet you keep fighting. Yes, that is the power you probably need the most in this world to survive. I mean all these superheroes, every episode of captain planet, it wasn’t until these superheroes were severely beaten that they got up for the one last time and defeated the evil.
P.S. I know I didn’t do justice to these three words but this is what basically defined my decade. happy New Year ya’ll