Reflections on Life and Death
Life and death are two sides of the same coin, and man is the player who loses either way — whether it lands on heads or tails. In this toss, the only difference is that if it lands on heads, man knows what kind of punishment awaits him; if it lands on tails, man remains ignorant of whether punishment or reward awaits, which is itself a punishment. These are life and death respectively: two threads intertwined with one another. With the beginning of every thought about life, there also arises a thought about death; in the same manner, with every thought about death, there is a thought concerning life.
We are living in a world where nothing is solved and nothing is known — a life full of oblivion, void, and nothingness, wandering through the nothing of nothingness for nothing. It is a world we cannot possibly comprehend or evaluate. We inhabit a darkness where we cannot see, either because there is too much light or no light at all. It is a deaf and blind world — a world where we, too, are deaf and blind.
Life is full of problems, with no end to adversity and uncertainty. Like a domino effect, one misfortune triggers another into infinity, leaving death as the only plausible resolution. Every morning, a man tells himself that today there will be an end, or tomorrow, or next month, or next year. In reality, that today, tomorrow, next month, or next year never welcomes us. Like a horse, we chase the carrot in front of us, not realizing that hope is the rider holding the stick. Knowingly or unknowingly — or perhaps for the sheer sake of it — we keep chasing. After all, if not the carrot, what else should one chase?
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We are like ants on a vast field, knowing neither its distance nor its direction. We have no idea what this world is, how it functions, or, most importantly, why it exists at all. We are in the middle of an ocean, clinging to an imaginary pole, forgetting the vastness surrounding us as we mistake our own constructions for reality. Life ends around that pole without any real progress. The struggling person ultimately ends up defeated, rejected, and shunned by nature and fate alike.
In the end, nothing matters — whether you remain static or strive endlessly like a fool for the impossible.
The ultimate reality of life is death. A man can deny and defy many things, but death remains an unavoidable, walking reality. What man cannot deny or defy, he inherently fears. In truth, it is not death itself that terrifies man, but rather the uncertainty of death and what follows it. The sheer unpredictability of it is enough to break him.
A man’s life is like a walk from the peak of a mountain down to its base. He is born at the top and begins his descent; the mountain is life, and waiting at the base — with an open mouth — is the ocean of death. As his life shortens, his fear grows, and he understands with stark clarity that he is nearing the end. In old age, standing so close to the precipice, he begins to pray, weep, and beg forgiveness from a Lord he never cared about before. Among all human fears, this alone is enough to terrify him: he has no idea where that ocean will carry him.
In conclusion, it is better to die than to live — but the irony is that one hardly dares to die. Thus, it would have been far better never to have been born at all.
