Now That I'm Dead, I See Things Differently

I can see the entire scope of our human lives, from newborn babies taking their first breaths of life to toddlers and children growing up and learning what it’s like to be a human being in today’s world.

I can see the first tentative teenage interactions as they socialize and find out where they fit in. Not only in the larger society but also to themselves as they embark on the first intrapersonal relationships of their young lives. Fumbling, bumbling, tentative at first but still driven to try.

I can see all the young couples meeting, dating, and usually hooking up till they find the right one, no matter how long it takes. They are driven by both the biological imperative of youth and the eternal optimism that it will all work out, somehow, some way.

I can see them becoming mature couples who form more solid relationships, like living together, getting married, raising families of their own. Becoming more self-assured, more comfortable as their experience and their confidence grows with each passing year.

I can see them becoming seniors, dealing with the certain knowledge that their allotted life span is becoming drastically shortened every day as their biological clocks tick on relentlessly. Their physical strength is waning, their health is deteriorating slowly but surely. And yet they too persevere.

Me? I have all the time in the world now.

Time is an abstraction to me, not an absolute. It is a way to observe, to measure, to realize how it all works. Suddenly, all the pieces fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

There are no more racial differences, no more politics. It's all about the quick and the dead.

There is a certain satisfaction in being able to put it all together now. It all makes sense after we go through it, and see how other people deal with the passage of time. It is a natural developmental process.

To notice all the attempts to strike the delicate balance between our early striving to become the people we wanted to be and the people we actually became in the end. Every generation has their own ideas, their own convictions to work through and try to achieve.

It is an inevitable process. It has been going on since human beings evolved into self-conscious, rational, reasoning entities. The many different ways we try to achieve our goals, however disparate.

All the pragmatism, optimism, and pessimism all blend and meld together to make up the cohesive history of our own lives. How it all worked out in the end, and how we can only truly see and comprehend it as we near the end.

All the drama, all the trauma, all the pain and pleasures, all the desperation and failed hopes and triumphal moments that pieced together make up the mosaic of each person’s life.

The passion, the politics, the quiet moments of satisfaction, and the dark terror of midnight nightmares and dashed hopes are all common to each of us. The ambitions realized, the fears and tears of disappointments and dashed dreams, and the loss of loved ones are all inevitable.

It is all part of life, and none of us are immune to the ravages of time and the way we started out, and the way we ended up. The unbelievable beauty of life and the tragic ugliness of personal, territorial, and internecine strife.

The horrible waste of wars, the suffering of the innocents, and the harsh cruelty of power for its own sake are all part of the human condition. None of us are immune to the ups and downs of everyday life, the struggle for basic survival, the unfairness of the 1% controlling economies worldwide.

In the end, it is all worth it.

All the aspirations, dreams, and hopes for the future we can only glimpse “through a glass darkly” at the time become real as we traverse our individual life paths. The dreamers will dream, the realists will scoff, and it is all repeated every generation. Life goes on, until it doesn’t.

Nothing is given to us. Life is a constant struggle to claim what we all want most for ourselves. The movers and shakers, the cooks and the bakers, the thinkers and drinkers, and the winners and losers are all on the same path with the same inevitable destination.

All we can do as individuals caught up in the mix of the right now is to try to realize our dreams and overcome those who would prevent us from doing so. I believe good will triumph over evil eventually. But it will not come easily, and it will not come quickly. But it will come.

We all just have to show up and do our best. That’s what life is all about, the eternal striving to make the world a better place. We can do it, we will do it. I can see it all clearly, now that I’m dead. Life is a never-ending cycle.

It’s all a matter of perspective.