The Sentient Sentinel

   Scientists claim that whoever lives the next sixty years will be offered a chance at immortality. Man's struggle with his own mortality may be near an end... as if it ever could be. We are impermanent beings once apart of a well balanced ecosystem that requires us to die. Death is life. Life is death. If no one ever died from the time of creation, we would be stepping on top of one another and all starving. Our planet is already overpopulated.

   This idea to me is frightening, because we have already gone too far with our artificial lives. Due to technological advances we have hindered our natural evolution. For most of history people died by the age of thirty, at the latest! Today, Americans are estimated to live into their seventies and eighties (LiveScience), some even breaking the triple digits. That is over double and sometimes triple the norm. This is good right? Medicine has brought us longer lives.

   I hear people constantly complaining about arthritis, cancer, unknown pains, age pains, so on and so forth. If we all lived to be no later than thirty years old, sure we'd still experience pain, but the onset of diseases like Alzheimer's would not happen. Our bodies are not designed to live as long as people think we deserve to live. They simply cannot handle it. The everyday pains your experience is because your body is breaking down, slowly, but surely. And what do you think a midlife crisis is from? Man needs change. And wondering where life is supposed to leave you at 30 or 40 is perfectly understandable, since you shouldn't even be alive at all.

   No matter how smart we think we are, no matter how advanced science comes, our physical bodies in this existence will never be permanent. There will always be death, and no matter how unnatural the means, it is very natural. I would rather live thirty amazing years, full of passion, then seventy in pain and agony. True, there are plenty of people out there who claim to live long and wonderful lives. But there are plenty more who have not. We live longer, but we're more unhealthy. We have not only grown weak as a species, but we grow weaker the older we become. Individuals appreciate things more the less of it they have, including life.

   We'd also have less population issues, and for those of you that think more the merrier... how many people are starving to death right now because we, the humans of this planet, cannot even support ourselves. When there are too many coyotes in a certain area, they kill off all of the game. Because of this, the coyotes starve until they reach an equal number for their habitat again and the smaller animals replenish themselves. Well, we've grown far past our habitat's means. We import, we destroy, and we multiply.

   John Doe 1970-2009. Your life is defined by a hyphen. It doesn't matter what you've done, where you've been, who you've met or what you've seen... it won't be remembered. Sure, your immediate relatives will remember you, but once they're gone and only their children remain, or once your children and grandchildren have also faded into the sands, who will remember you? Who will care? Any pictures you've taken of yourself and posted all over your Facebook, unimportant, subjective material. Is this some cruel, sick, morbid joke I'm playing? Or some kind of pessimistic outlandish view on life? No, it's the truth. If you think truth is jaded, then perhaps the world you live in is just that, jaded. And the truth of the matter is, you're unimportant.

   There are plenty of studies out there, psychological and philosophical, that study and attempt to define self-importance. What is it that defines ourselves as unique? Why do we assume that we are better in some way than the rest of not only humanity or the other species that inhabit this planet but the inanimate as well? And why do we feel some sort of self-entitlement to have a special mind, spirit, and soul? Why should there be more than the flesh?

   The soul is an idea fabricated from man's struggle with his own mortality. The soul grants man an escape from death, and coincidentally, life as well. If we have a soul, then there must be something more after the physical, which thus began the creation of heaven fantasies and even hells. Is this unconfirmed and almost irrational hope healthy for the individual ego? Does it matter, have I not already stated how unimportant we are?

   The planet existed perfectly fine before us, and without our viral tainting of it, it will survive just fine without us. Nature is an intricately developed ecosystem that balances itself and creates a constant state of renewal. Certainly scientists claim that someday the sun will engulf us, just as the sun will some day be engulfed by the Milky Way, but it is unlikely that man will witness these events. To be quite frank, the entire planet could explode into space dust, and there would be hardly a ripple throughout space. We certainly are unimportant to the universe.

   Why am I telling you, the reader, all of this? Is it my plan to pull you down into some depressed hole that I currently reside in? Far from it. As soon as you realize how unimportant you truly are, the sooner you can attempt to enjoy the life you have. Does this reason seem unusual, twisted, or tainted? It is a belief shared by many, and it has just cause. If you realize that you will inevitably die, and that the world will get along fine without you, and that no matter how much material wealth (including people or relationships) you acquire, that it really won't matter, the sooner you can become what spiritualists call enlightened. In fact, Tibetan monks are known for sky burials (putting their deceased on pillars so that birds can eat their flesh) and creating instruments from the bones to further impress the unimportance of the material.

   To become enlightened isn't some ethereal means of removing yourself from the very thing that you are by denying human needs. It's a state of understanding. Understand how important the people in your life are right now, because they won't be here tomorrow. Understand that you will never be more beautiful than you are at this very moment, because in the next instance you will be a completely different person. Know that time isn't some enigmatic puzzle to be solved, but a blessing, that allows you to truly appreciate existence, because you know that it is temporary. If the sky was in a permanent state of sun-setting, then the site would become less beautiful to the beholder... it would become stagnant. Humans need change.

   So know that as the cemetery gates rust and crumble, the weeds grow tall, and the stone that holds your hyphen is worn into rumble, that there is no permanence. You are living now, and trust me, you are alive, which means that now is the time to live. If you wait until tomorrow, you will be gone forever as a shadow fades into the night. And for all you know, this is it. There could be no afterlife, and certainly if one follows Occam's Razor, there is not. Don't waste your life suffering for some chance.

   Exercise:
   Go to your local cemetery, preferably during the day (since it is illegal at least in Michigan to visit after dusk). As you walk past the cemetery gates, look around you. Look at all of the pale, faceless souls. The stone memoirs only remembered by the groundskeeper (and sometimes barely even by them). Lay down in front of a tombstone and close your eyes. Imagine that you are laying in your tomb, encased in wood and surrounded by dirt. Feel the damp, stagnant air. Imagine your body, laying there, motionless, for years. The wood around you decomposes as bugs and roots slowly work their way through. And like the wood that houses you, your body too is decomposed by bacteria, insects, and roots, until you are no longer recognizable and eventually, you become compost. You return to the dirt in which you came from. That is death. As hard as this imagination drill may be, if you are successful, you will have a new appreciation for impermanence and life.