What It Means To Be Human: Mortality
How many times have you sat down to consider your mortality? For most of us, this is a gloomy thought. We imagine the end of a life that we have enjoyed among the people we love, doing the things that thrill us and watching beautiful spectacles. When we think about our lives, both the good and bad parts, we are overtaken by the notion that we have so much to live for. We all have plans for our futures, things we want to achieve for ourselves, our loved ones, and sometimes for the world around us. Even with such noble plans, our mortality has a way of showing us that we are not completely in control of how far our ride on earth goes.
The thought also extends towards the mortality of those around us; those we love dearly. It is almost inconceivable to consider the possibility that someone we were having a spirited moment with a day before is no longer among us the following day. This is a feeling I am quite familiar with. The first time I experienced it was when I lost a friend. We were in our 11th grade when he succumbed to an illness he’d had for a while. In the years before that, he would only fall ill and stay away from school for a couple of days or weeks and he’d come back feeling much better. We, his classmates, got used to this and we expected his return just like the times before. But this time, he was gone, to never come back. There is some shattering feeling that overcomes young people when their peer dies. It becomes clear that mortality has no regard for age; it strikes at any time. And so, there we were, his family and friends mourning the death of a young vibrant son, brother, friend.
It is important to seriously consider the fact that death is inevitable. This thought shouldn’t come as a wave of sadness over one’s spirit. This realization should be what keeps us awake to the fact that there is so much we can do while we still have time. We can express love, we can forgive, we can teach, we can visit, we can play, we can create, we can learn, we can build…so much.
In our African culture, I’m certain we have noticed how talk of death is frowned upon. It is perceived as an invitation of death itself, especially when one talks about life insurance policies. Well, we ought to face the fact that death does not need an invitation to visit. We should, however, embrace it as a normal stage in the life of all humans. Doing so allows for a clearer and more objective view of death itself. I am of the view that accepting my mortality allows me to make the right decisions at crucial moments, plan for my loved ones to be well taken care of once I am no longer among them.
In the minds of those who strongly wish to live forever, ideas have been conceived to cheat death. For example, an infographic written by Todd Jacquith and the www.futurism.com team explains various options that have been suggested to usher in an age of immortal beings:
- The Cloud — Downloading one’s mind into a robotic vessel
- Acquire a New Model — Replace old organs for stem cell grown organs
- Cure The Problem — Aging is regarded as an illness; find its cure, live forever
- Perfect The Model — Improve on the current flawed human body at a genetic level
- The “Pill” — Pills to extend the tissue youthfulness
- Cyborgs — Creating human-machine hybrids
Considering how the bounds of science continue to be stretched, it’s only a matter of time before some or all of these options roll out onto the shelves. If there’s one thing I do not doubt about, it is man’s tenacity to achieve a goal. However, this begs the question; how much of our humanity would we be able to retain the longer we live?
“Yes, it will all end one day; but today is worth living”
-Innocent Mwatsikesimbe-
If we were to look at how our lives are structured, we would understand that immortality wouldn’t provide any happiness, just like my university lecturers would frequently say, ‘even if we gave you a whole year, you would still work on your assignment the last day’. Without our mortality, no one would take care when making decisions; urgency as a concept wouldn’t exist. What exactly would be our point of reference as regards appreciating the experiences we have in our lifetimes? We would take every moment, every decision, every person for granted. The thought that something won’t last forever is what drives us into appreciating the blissful moments we experience, the decisions we carefully make in every avenue of life, and the loved ones we have around us.
We ought to understand that we all have a moment to exist on earth. The lives we live are determined by every decision we make, which is why care must be applied when doing so. But not in such a way that we live a life of bubble wrap around us. Take calculated risks, and even when it doesn’t go as planned, we can always know that c’est la vie. In the words of Innocent Mwatsikesimbe, Zimbabwean writer and poet, ‘yes, it will all end one day; but today is worth living.’ Such words are an ode to life itself, urging us to savor the time we have and not burden our minds with the inevitable end.
Now that we have considered our mortality, what will we do with the time we have left? Even without an accurate time frame of what that period might be, being able to read this is proof that there is still time allocated to our existence; time that can be filled with moments that light up your spirit; moments that leave us with a feeling of contentment, knowing we have lived a full life.
