Timor Mortis

We often hear old people saying, once this-some task-is done, I am free to die, or sometimes if everything is done they are happy to die. At such times there is always at least one person who says, why do you say such things? You are going to live long, don’t fuss. This particular person, or many a times this big group of people is many times present in everyone’s family. They are always cheerful about life and fearful about death though it’s someone else’s. They always poke those who talk about death, or dying people. They are those who don’t like to hear ‘he/she died‘, they jab and ask us to say ‘he/she passed away‘. They criticize bitching about someone who is dead, and teach us to ‘have some respect for the dead’ (even if the dead one had scammed the property worth millions, or betrayed his wife!) Basically, they are just not death-friendly (!).

But almost everyone does that, right? Many people try to postpone a medical test or skip it; they don’t want to know much, they like to stay in sweetened myth of a healthy life. It’s another thing that this attitude, many times leads them to a more advanced stage of their illness, may it be diabetes, heart disease or cancer, number of patients of which, are evolving in our country. There are many, who hide or don’t keep track of their ages. They’d dye their hair, use anti-aging products for skin, hide wrinkles and thus, their insecurities are utilized efficiently by various beauty product brands. Then there is a special category of those who call themselves ‘young at heart’, and try to sound cool to the younger generation by sometimes participating adventurous activities and come up with the one-liners such as ‘Age is just a number’ or ‘Age is a case of mind over matter’ etc. They are so overenthusiastic about everything that it makes us wonder, what exactly in goodness are they so excited about?

All this reminds me a distant relative’s 99th birthday party. The sons of the person had arranged that extravagant celebration, for this achievement (of reaching 99, which is rare these days!). My 6 year old nephew was stunned by the idea of elders celebrating extravagant birthday, he used to think that it was only for the younger ones. After a deep analysis, maybe he got an interesting conclusion. He said, ‘Okay, now I get it. It’s his 99th birthday, so when he’ll be 100 it’s finished! Right?’ One tight slap was the only response that he got. It’s funny how numbers play with our minds, the shopkeepers and brands play with us all the time by writing price as 499 or 999 instead of 500 and 1000. We say it’s a psychological tendency to feel that we saved so much more by buying the product worth 999 than by that worth 1000, though it’s just a rupee. Same was the case with this kid, who thought 100 is a complete number. He was a very thoughtful kid with vivid imagination, but all his skills got constricted by this incident; just because he predicted the person’s death, indirectly (surprisingly, the birthday-boy died before reaching 100! But let’s get serious..)

There are so many theories regarding death, afterlife. The entire ‘religious market’ is based on such theories only. Theory would be a very bad terminology, but the people following them take them very seriously. Every religion (except a few) tells only one thing, follow our terms and you’ll be placed in a world of infinite happiness after death. If you don’t, then the world of infinite suffering is ready for you. The entire life is then spent in worrying about the life after death, but that’s a different story. If, such a thing really exists and a majority of population follows it, then why is there such a hush-hush about death? Why fear death? And why ignore its nearing? Why ignore the aging? Or even if those worlds of happiness and suffering after death don’t exist, what is the point of this ignorance?

I wonder if it is because people have a tendency-not sure if it is natural-to shed big responsibilities. People always seem to struggle for power and authority, but it’s an illusion. They may like to rule a company, or a political party, or even just a small scale organization; they may like to have called upon stage to get awards or felicitation or even just a bouquet. But they don’t really like to accept the maturity that comes with age. When you convince yourself to be young at heart, when you cover your age, you deny the wisdom and knowledge of life that comes with it. In Tuesdays with Morrie, Prof. Morrie says,

”As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”

All this philosophy sounds nice. But we always observe people saying I wish I were young again. For that, they create an illusion of this wish fulfilled. ‘Fulfilling’ this wish, varies from person to person, some like to ‘look’ young, some like to ‘feel’ young, some behave like youngsters, some take part in the mischiefs and spoil their grandkids-despite the defiance by kid’s parents-in order to be considered as a member of the kids’ gang. We never hear once, ‘I wish I was seventy.’ If aging is so valuable, why don’t we embrace it?

Because this ignorance reflects unsatisfied lives, unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven’t found meaning. Because if you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can’t wait until sixty-five. So all younger people should know this-if you always battle against getting older, you always suffer, because it will happen anyway. And the truest fact of life is that eventually, you ARE going to die. The only thing you can make sure is that the death doesn’t start early and stay for long time before actually dying. Morrie answers to the query if he is envious of the young,

”Oh, I guess I do. I envy them being able to go to the health club, or go for a swim. Or dance. Mostly for dancing. But envy comes to me, I feel it, and then I let it go. Let it go. Tell yourself, That’s envy, I’m going to separate from it now, And walk away. Of course, it is impossible for the old not to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that. This is your time to be in your thirties. I had my time to be in my thirties, and now is my time to be seventy-eight. You have to find what’s good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue.”

The truth about the old ones is, part of them is every age. They are three-­year-old, they are five-year-old, they are thirty-seven-year-old, they are fifty-year-old. They’ve been through all of them, and they know what it’s like. We should delight in being a child when it’s appropriate to be a child. We should delight in being a wise old man when it’s required to be a wise old man. Think of all we can be! We are every age, up to our own. So how can we be envious of where the young are, when we have already been there!

The Ultimate Question of Existence

Recently, I watched the newly released movie in theater-Jurassic Park: The fallen kingdom. Overall, it was a good movie, technically and otherwise. The usual plot of any Jurassic Park/world movie is almost the same, someone gets greedy and wants to use genetic technology and the dinosaurs for some purpose. For example, John Hammond wanted to create something very amazing with his money and influence so he built the theme park to astonish the world by having living dinosaurs in it, the next part has his son bringing out the T-rex for selling it to a park, the third part deals with adrenaline junkie kids to visit the island for adventure. Then there is ‘Jurassic world’ series, where the park is rebuilt and we see two parties- 1] park’s founding body who thinks that dinosaurs are just another toy to show in the amusement park & 2] The military who wants to create dinosaur species to hunt given target. In the end, everyone learns his lesson in the end in his own way.

The latest sequel talks about one more problem-the volcano on Isla Numblar getting more and more active, and having the potential to burn the island completely which would cause the elimination of all the dinosaur species from earth (once again). This starts a conflict, whether to let mother nature rule (let the dinosaurs die) or to meddle in her business (and save them by displacing them to a new island). Immediately there are two groups, those who want to save the dinosaurs and those who don’t want to take any additional actions. There is a third hidden group of the opportunists, who deceive the first group to track the dinosaurs on the island and capture them for experimentation and military purposes.

The lone diplodocus on Isla Numblar

There is one incident in the movie where, from the island, military men rescue as many dinosaur species as possible and take them on their military ship. The time is critical and the volcano is on the peak of destruction. Everyone reaches on board and suddenly they all hear an excruciating sound, the sad cries of a giant Diplodocus (sort of), who was left behind, standing alone on the deck. As if she was calling them to come back for her, or saying her goodbyes, no one would know. No one could do anything. They didn’t return for her, maybe because she was just a harmless herbivore, who took too much space, and couldn’t be a killer. In seconds the lava erupted and poor dinosaur, who was once the crown jewel of the park and the epic magnanimous creature of the planet, was embraced by the flames. This triggers something in the viewers, that they can describe with no locution.

The senate witnesses a debate between first two groups-whether or not to save isla numblar’s dinosaurs from volcanic eruption? Tough question, because it starts its own list of questions-Who has more right to live than others? Who is the better one? Who has the right to decide that someone is better than others? Who gets the authority to decide everyone’s net worth? Is there any measure, any unit to describe that? How many units is good and how many is bad? What is good and what is bad?

This reminded me of another movie, ‘The Oxford Murders’. In that, the protagonist-Martin, a university student, unravels the mystery of his landlady’s murder, while being fooled by his idol-Arthur Seldom-who is actually, trying to cover the murderer because of some guilt from past. Seldom makes Martin believe that a serial killer is challenging them by giving them a mathematical problem. But his puzzles are used as a cover by a desperate father of a seven year old girl in need of a lung transplant and he murders next few (who are already on the verge of dying). He plans to blow up the school-bus of neurodivergent kids and use one of their lungs for his daughter’s transplant. He dies in the ordeal, but the curious thing is, why did he think it’s appropriate to take lives of those kids? Because their consciousness was developed in a different way from that of ours? Does it make them insignificant? The French graphic novel Le Transperceneige (on which the movie Snowpiercer is based) shows the struggle-to live on the same footage, in the ice age caused by a failed global warming experiment, done by humans of course-between the high and low classes of humans-not caring about the whereabouts of other elements of the planet’s biological sector. It, therefore, indirectly shows the narcissistic human nature-how little we care about others, may they be other humans or creatures.

There are many movies and fiction shows that show similar line of existential crisis. It’s funny how the production houses for such movies (which are mostly Hollywood, Marvel or Warner Bros, etc.) keep their own countries at the center of the decision making body in the movie and still make money on an international level. Even in kid’s cartoon, Doraemon shows Japanese earth’s representative in outer space, the Potterverse mentions the magical population from only Europe. This is of course obvious, everyone favors their own troupe. We naturally feel safe in a familiar environment with people we know. This natural instinct-a characteristic feature representing our animalistic lineage-is interpreted by human population as a license to berate the unfamiliar.

In his book Sapiens-A brief history of mankind, Yuval Noah Harari has given account of the socio-psycho-biological evolution of mankind. There were more than six species under the category of ‘Humans’ (under the genus Homo) one of which are us, Homo sapiens. In his attempt to ‘answer what made the others decline making us the only human species’, he describes the evolution of cognitive function of Homo sapiens –  which is nothing but an extremely ableist narrative that gives a free pass to all the above cases of “selectivism”.

We are supposed to be cooperating with everyone of us, every single element in the world is important and deserves basic dignity, and therefore, the right to consent. We are no one to make decisions for others. If everyone understands this, it’d be easier for us to decide what to do with the dinosaurs in Isla Numblar.