Death, Graduation, and Lyrics

It is always extremely difficult to think of something to write about when all you have in your head is song lyrics.

It's registration week for me. I say for me because I have no idea anymore how registration is supposed to go, or who goes when, or in what order. I mention to a friend that I'm having trouble getting a class I want and find out his registration was two weeks ago, or it's next month, or something. So who knows.

It's really hard to believe that I'm finally coming down to the end of my University career. I mean, I've known for a while that at some point, I would have more semesters behind me than ahead of me, but I was never really cognizant of the fact until I was looking at my SAPR and realized that "some day" has become "a year from now." Maybe even sooner, if I decided to do something crazily motivated like take a winter session.

I can't help but think about what life is going to be like when class is over. I have to admit, I'm pretty intimidated by the fact; it's like all the waiting I've done, all the preparation, all the build-up has reached its crescendo, and now it's like "Go! Get out into the world! Find your destiny!"

Of course, I realize that it's not exactly the way my thoughts imagine life after college to be. There won't be a referee firing off a shot or an announcer shouting "and they're off!" Maybe that would be the case if I had a different major, instead of Humanities. But it still feels like the time is coming to a close, that I'm going to need to soon start thinking, seriously, about what I want for life. Where I want to be, what I want to do. Which is not to say that I've never thought of those things in the past few years, but rather that I always thought of them only in the abstract, things that were hazy and obscured by the fog of "some day."

Maybe I'll travel first. That's something I really want to do.

Because I'm thinking about life and goals and time, I find myself drawn back to a comment my philosophy instructor made in class on Tuesday. I made a point about how the fact that the Earth is fated to die (which it is) seems like a great evil from which no good could possibly justify it, and he responded: "Is death so horrible that life is not worth living?"

It's stuck with me. Mortality is something that we, especially at this age, have a hard time really grasping. There is a difference between knowing something, after all, and knowing, in your heart and mind and believing it. We know we're going to all die, that every single person will die, and yet, I don't think we really know that about ourselves.

And it seems horribly wrong to think that life will end, which is why we cling to the hope of an afterlife, that somehow, our existence will continue on after our bodies have succumbed to the frailty of mortality. Is it greedy, to want more? To feel that no matter how much life is allotted to us, that it isn't enough? If you were given the choice of what age to live to, what would you pick? How many years would it be before you decide "that is enough. I have had enough of life now."

It's a strange paradox for me, given that I consider immortality to be the worst possible fate imaginable, the ultimate prison, to have one's soul or consciousness or whatever bound forever to flesh. And yet, I don't know at what point I can see myself saying "I'm ready. I've had enough."

And I know that there are people who do reach that stage, especially if death is a relief from suffering. Or at least, they think they reach that stage, a point where the quality of life is less than what good may come of a peaceful death.

I don't know what any of this means, but it's what's on my mind at the moment. Well, that and the lyrics to a Johnathan Coulton song. So there you go.