Sensei
剣道家
- Nov 4, 2019
- 6,336
I went to a funeral the other day and it made an impression on me. It was the funeral of my father's cousin who was a friend of the family. He was a kind and decent man and I wanted to show my respects. I had feared that it would be a pain to sit through the ceremony, but it was beautiful and fitting. I'm usually not that easily moved, but it was touching to see his stepsons cry; he was a beloved man. My thoughts drifted to my own death, if I will die a natural death or by my own hand.
What made the the whole thing feel unreal was the urn, which was sitting on a table in the middle of the church, made of wood and very humble. What was once a man was now mere ashes in a container about the size of a two-liter PET bottle. When the urn was lowered into the grave, which was merely a small hole, I thought to myself, this is the human tragedy. We are born, we live our little lives and struggle with our little problems, and then we die, and it has been all for nothing. Everything will be annihilated and forgotten. Mankind will go extinct, the earth will be incinerated by the sun, and the stars will go out. Not even an atom of mankind will survive as the universe will turn into a soup of subatomic particles.
This has neither made me more nor less suicidal, but it has got me thinking. How many would come to my funeral? Probably not many. What would my funeral look like? Well, that's up to my family. Do I even want a funeral? I know that a funeral can serve as closure for family and friends, but I find the thought harrowing for some reason. There aren't many ways to avoid a funeral. I could tell my family that I don't want one, but that would basically be like telling them that I intend to end my life prematurely. I could make sure to disappear, but that's easier said than done. Float out to sea on an inflatable mattress with weights around my ankles and overdose on morphine? A dream that never will come true. Even if it did come true, I would eventually be declared dead and there would be some kind of ceremony anyway.
To be honest, I don't really have a point with any of this. I just needed to write it down.
What made the the whole thing feel unreal was the urn, which was sitting on a table in the middle of the church, made of wood and very humble. What was once a man was now mere ashes in a container about the size of a two-liter PET bottle. When the urn was lowered into the grave, which was merely a small hole, I thought to myself, this is the human tragedy. We are born, we live our little lives and struggle with our little problems, and then we die, and it has been all for nothing. Everything will be annihilated and forgotten. Mankind will go extinct, the earth will be incinerated by the sun, and the stars will go out. Not even an atom of mankind will survive as the universe will turn into a soup of subatomic particles.
This has neither made me more nor less suicidal, but it has got me thinking. How many would come to my funeral? Probably not many. What would my funeral look like? Well, that's up to my family. Do I even want a funeral? I know that a funeral can serve as closure for family and friends, but I find the thought harrowing for some reason. There aren't many ways to avoid a funeral. I could tell my family that I don't want one, but that would basically be like telling them that I intend to end my life prematurely. I could make sure to disappear, but that's easier said than done. Float out to sea on an inflatable mattress with weights around my ankles and overdose on morphine? A dream that never will come true. Even if it did come true, I would eventually be declared dead and there would be some kind of ceremony anyway.
To be honest, I don't really have a point with any of this. I just needed to write it down.
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