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Thoughts on death, dying and living
Youth voice: Thoughts on death, dying and living.
One question recently came to my mind again and again. It is “Why do we do anything nowadays?” I will explain what I mean:
In today’s world, there is one thing for sure and that is that the world is more confused than ever about what lies beyond the grave. I believe one of the following three things will happen:
1. We die and just don’t live any more
2. We die and go to some sort of afterlife
3. We die and are reborn into something
Nowadays the ‘afterlife’ is uncertain, even compared to in the past. In the past, you were told if you are good you go to Heaven, and if you are evil you go to Hell. But since then, science has shed light on many of the miracles that we believed our creator had done. Even how we came to be on this Earth, and how all life and all things came to be: these topics have been put into the limelight after many eras of people believing in what their rulers told them and not questioning them.
One of the few certainties in this world is death and no matter where you look today, there is death. Life today (in a wealthy country) goes something like this- you are born, grow up, go to school and college, get a job, find the love of your life, lose your parents, have children and grow old and die. That life changes from person to person, but it is more or less the norm of what an average person experiences during his/ her lifetime. In the end, we all have to face death sooner or later and most of us aren’t ready for it and are scared of it for some reason.
So no matter what we do in life, we will die and all that will be left of us are memories and photos. If you’re lucky enough, you will be remembered in history but that is all.
Say we move into space and colonise the Moon and Mars, but then something happens and we are all wiped out and the solar system is destroyed. Whatever we did would be lost and if there is life in space they would not know who we were or what we did. So, all of what we did would be lost to time.
If any one of the three things I mentioned earlier is true, is there really any point to living life? We go to school and so on, and we die. Say if option one was true, then it wouldn’t matter what we learned in this life. We wouldn’t need education because we wouldn’t be anymore. If option two was true, then would it matter what we learn in this life? Past generations wouldn’t know what we know and anyway the religions don’t say anything about having to have knowledge to get to the afterlife. If option three was true, then it wouldn’t matter what we learned in this life because we would forget it in the next life.
That is just a question that is on my mind and I know I will probably not get a full answer - however I'd like to hear what others think about it.
By: Stephen Howlin
