If we’re lucky, our postmortem shelf-life lasts about 2 generations. After that, the story of us fades from existence entirely. When the collective memory others have of us disappears, we move from mostly dead to genuinely dead.
We might live a few extra minutes a year in the side glances of strangers who pass by our gravestones (on their way to visit a soon-to-be-permanently-forgotten loved one).
A clever quip on a headstone, and the laughter it generates, can raise us from the dead for a few moments. But honestly, that seems like a desperate attempt by the departed to prolong their existence.
YouTube is heaven on Earth. It’s the digital preservation of self that survives after we pass. Our subconscious desire for everlasting life is at the core of YouTube’s popularity. We’re the modern-day version of the sculptor in Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias, posting digital carvings of ourselves in a futile attempt to stem the tide of our transience.
As the last memory of us fades to black, we transition from the warmth of humanity to the cold breathless, inanimate. Ultimately, our blood, bone, and guts give way to the flat and dimensionless world of dusty photos, handwritten notes, password-protected social media sites, and, possibly, a couple of YouTube or Tik Tok videos.
Such is our fate.
The thought of man’s impermanence was so bothersome we invented the concept of an afterlife as a counterbalance. Entire religions have baked the notion of everlasting life into their concocted fairy tales. Most of us were probably raised in a religion that fostered such beliefs.
Your parents likely told you that grandma and grandpa were in heaven, and one day “you’ll see them again!” I’m not sure parents actually believed this. It’s more likely they were repeating what their parents told them, or perhaps they thought this lie would somehow protect us or make us less fearful. Maybe they were just too damn lazy to level with us. Probably a combination of all of these.
I think this world would be better if we were honest with ourselves about our impermanence and, more importantly, honest with our kids about it from early on.
Embracing the truth that life is temporary would make us value and appreciate it more.
Instead of telling our kids that by obeying a set of rules, they’ll get to live forever, we should teach them to live a life that leaves this world in better shape than they found it. So their children and everyone else who comes after them have an opportunity to live comfortably without undue suffering.
Instead of lying to our kids about heaven, preach about human rights and the importance of equity and preserving our planet.
A philosophy that embraces our temporary nature and stresses a responsibility to preserve the planet for future generations would go a long way toward improving the here and now.
All this nonsense about an afterlife has harmed our culture and our planet. It’s an excellent example of how well-intentioned dishonesty can be just as destructive as malevolent dishonesty.
All of us are about 2.5 generations away from true non-existence.
As the final memory of us fades to black and we transition from the warmth of humanity to the cold breathless inanimate, our existence gets relegated to the flat and dimensionless world of dusty photos, handwritten notes, and password-protected social media pages. Such is our fate.
We will not be reunited with loved ones on puffy white clouds — that’s a Peter Pan-level fantasy, and the sooner we let it go, the truer to ourselves we can be.
We are all short-timers, so lets seize that realization and use it as fuel for making a positive impact in the NOW — for caring and making the world a better place TODAY, so those who come after us, can have a happy and peaceful existence. Is there a more noble endeavor?
bendingtheneedle 