In The End...

Currently Listening To :: Waiting To Reach You :: Travis

I got off the train home about 8pm. It was dark, cold, and it was spitting here and there. The air was so heavy with rain you could smell it, and I had just seen the most beautifully depressing movie I have seen in a long time. As I realised no one was home, the scene was set for a long melancholy walk home. So I turned on my MD player and began the trudge home...

And my mind began to wonder...the building inundation of September 11th rememorabilia, the feelings evoked by the movie, the fact I haven't been to see Gavin's grave in a while...

Put up your hands if you’ve ever wished you could live forever. Let’s be honest. Now assuming most of you put you hands up and currently aren’t suicidal, keep your hands up if you think that you can choose when you want to die. I thought so…so if we already know we can’t live forever and that we probably can’t choose the time when we go, how come death is reserved for those selling life insurance, wills and people in the “twilight” of their lives?

While a lot of us rarely take time out to stop and smell the roses, even fewer of us have even contemplated the concept of death. And who could blame us? We’re (mostly) (relatively) young, in the process of gaining an education, and the future is still ours for the taking. So where does death fit into the scheme of things? Well, for the majority right now, it luckily doesn’t.

For a smaller number however, death is a very real concept. We are blessed that our generation so far has not had to go to war and risk our lives on the battlefield, and that modern science has reduced sickness and life-threatening disease to a minimum. Here in Australia, we are indeed a lucky country.

But what strange times we live in. While the specter of war and death is an everyday occurrence in some countries, modern film now graphically depicts death to the extent that watching people being cut down in a swath of bullets is just another 5-second action scene. Realistic computer games (such as the hugely popular Counter Strike) where the whole object is to eliminate the opposition with realistic weapons have become worldwide phenomenon. Rappers and rockers alike scream about killing and death; the record label Murder INC is the name that holds some of today’s most successful commercial artists. It’s almost like death has become a commodity, just another tool with which to make money. Death, like sex, sells, and no matter the age group, we’re consuming in mass amounts.

While we may deal with death everyday in an abstract way, it is the realness and finality of death that death has for us in this life is universal. No matter what religion you hold on to or what culture you come from, the result is the same, and no matter how many prayers you say, how many questions why, or how much anger you hold, the fact of the matter is the matter of fact. Nothing is going to bring that person back.

Death comes to us all, and when the time comes, there is no bargaining with death like the movies would have you believe. It strikes like a bolt of lightning with no thunder, it comes unseen like a blast of wind that chills you to the bone. But most of all, it leaves you empty inside, asking questions that there are no answers to, and looking for answers there is no comfort in....

What is endurance?

It's holding on...holding on...