On death and legacy

So, we have fallen into comfort, people. Just a bunch of lighthearted, happy subjects: inferiority complex, impostor syndrome, hell, alcohol, love. We’ve become complacent. That won’t do. Let’s do something heavy. Something that really makes the heart pump.

So, death…

That part is easy. Inevitable. Cold. It makes you feel rotten, and it’s eternal. It can’t be bargained with. From time to time, it’s the only justice that exists in the world.

Boring.

Fuck you, death. Not today.

Moving on, after death there’s probably nothing except legacy and, just like death, I find that concept exhausting and boring.

Hell yeah! Let’s live a meaningful life so people will remember us in 100 years. But we can’t do anything really bad, so we have to be remembered for good stuff.

Who the fuck remembers good stuff?

So I tell you: fuck legacy.

You want to have a lasting impact, something that endures until the end of the world?

Throw a fucking rock, skipping it over the surface of a lake.

You will have taken a rock that’s been static for God knows how long, put it in motion, and then committed it to the deep forever. It may stay down there until the world ends. Or for billions of years, in darkness created by you.

Let’s hope rocks are not sentient, you inconsiderate ass.

Our fear of death has turned us into beings that try to influence a moment in the future that is a complete impossibility from our point of view: our own funeral.

Humanity tends to go all in. On one hand, you have the live-fast-die-young crew, dead set on melting their veins, and every pipe in their bodies, with as many destructive things as they can find.

And hey, all the power to you.

But self-destruction gets boring fast. And after it becomes boring, it’s still inescapable.

Boring as it is, death is probably the enemy we are meant to face in life. An enemy with victory guaranteed. An enemy that owns you in a way nothing and nobody else ever will.

Because death is not just something that happens to you.

Death is part of what you are.

The other side is even worse: people pretending to be great, building themselves on a sense of continuity.

These are the people who retell every one of their achievements, who brag about every little thing and turn it into a competition.

People who can’t enjoy a night out before blurting out, “You ate seven chicken wings? I ate twelve.”

That is: people so deep into making everything a bloody competition that they can’t even eat fucking chicken wings without needing to win.

And not just win. Win by the correct margin.

After all, they want to be winners, not gluttons.

Sounds familiar?

It gets worse.

Which is funny, because they are both worshipping death.

One side worships it by rushing toward it.

The other worships it by building a little shrine out of achievements, LinkedIn posts, corrected anecdotes, and chicken wing margins.

I guess that’s how we lost David Carradine.

He was really aiming for the fences and, hey, the legend continues.

I had to choke back a laugh.

So, every time a guy works himself into a massive coronary event after thirty or forty years of nonstop work, there’s some fun-loving soul saying, “Poor sad asshole,” while knocking back a liter of liquor.

Not in memory of the fallen.

It’s just what he does.

And every time a party animal injects enough heroin to destroy the nervous system of a humpback whale and mixes it with enough alcohol to make Medusa look approachable — you know, the Jimi Hendrix Experience — there’s some productivity ghoul checking his watch and saying, “What a waste.”

Which is unfair.

The man wanted to run his fingers through her hair.

It’s fascinating to dissect these subjects because, in the end, so much of what humanity builds is just worship for death.

Huge mausoleums are probably the best example, but every skyscraper, every fast car, hell, every dinner date has the same death-worship undertone once you start looking.

It’s beautiful, really.

We are cute little birds building nests out of memories, achievements, purchases, vacations, relationships, photographs, and carefully edited lies.

And every time we add something new, we say to ourselves:

“Today, I will stave off death with this beautiful memory. Here you go. Instagrammed. TikToked. Commercialized. Proof that I am perfect, my life is perfect, and I can spend a week without showering because I don’t stink.”

Well, you do stink, my friend.

And so do I.

And so does everyone.

We stink in life and we stink even worse in death, so why do we live fake lives trying to shape a world that, for all practical purposes, will not contain us?

It’s like—

Have you ever watched a very violent, very exhausting movie, say, The Purge, and wished for a second that you could see another movie with the same characters?

Well, the ones who made it out without being sliced and diced for patriotic reasons.

And yes, damn, those movies suck, but I still love them.

I mean a movie where you just watch them be happy. Grow old. Recover. Have breakfast. Develop knee problems. Forget why they walked into a room. Become boring.

A sense of completion.

No?

Is it just me?

Damn. Learn some empathy, people.

When you spend too long trying to be impressive, amazing, remarkable, unforgettable, and just generally great, it’s because you live inside The Purge.

But this is the catch:

When the siren sounds at 7 a.m., the Purge ends.

And so does your life.

You get to live your whole existence inside a worldwide free-for-all, trying to survive, trying to win, trying to look good covered in blood, only to discover that peace arrives at the exact same moment you disappear.

So live a little.

Or don’t.

Either way, it’s your funeral.

Literally.

Peace.