A plane crashed in the desert a few weeks ago, killing four local young men who at the time might have been at the peak of their own lives. These four great men were praised and honored at funerals, in memorial services, at personal vigils, and most importantly, through Facebook status updates.
Yes, we do in fact live in a conceited, self-praising world in which everyone wants you to know about their own pain. Especially the pain that comes from a postmortem tattoo draped over your torso conveying the image of an honorable acclamation to the rest of your friends liking and commenting on your freshly posted photos.
It was a sad, sad day indeed. One that nobody wishes that they could have back.
A few days after this, amidst all of the commotion and last rite tweets, a great friend and I were having a conversation about the sickening plague of social media that has now become the world in which we live in, and is a tool for which the death of a loved one can be exploited in attempts of receiving attention for the grief and sorrow that comes from such a negative event.
"See, your perspective is a little bit different than mine about death." He said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, you have had a more intimate relationship with death itself. You have lost loved ones, you know what it's like, you've experienced it. As for me, I've never really had someone who I have been close to actually die. I'm kinda fortunate in that regard."
He did have a point. And as two-faced as this may sound with me referencing a conversation that I had with someone else recognizing trials and misfortunes in my own life, I only use this to set the stage for the epiphany that bubbled out of our discussion while we sucked back on shot glasses filled with uncorrupted drops of diet Mt. Dew.
The thought-provoking cue that followed his last sentence was this: My own relationship with death isn't unique, it isn't special, it isn't something that only I am going to be able to understand. It is the same feeling that every single person will experience at some point in this puny existence. The reasoning behind this is that everybody dies. And sooner or later, we are all going to have to man up and face the fat lady as she's warming up to the orchestrated grand finale.
Sad, I know. But again, that's just what life is all about.
And death.
Everybody dies. And as depressing and half-empty that this blogpost is sounding like, it is just a simple understanding that every last one of us will some day lose another person that we love. Whether it's by lung cancer, old age, a brain aneurysm, or a controlled shotgun blast to the forehead, everybody dies. That's just all part of these immeasurable circumstances that we all agreed to be apart of.
How you handle that sour hand of cards that you will inevitably be dealt, well, that's your own business. At times you may in fact feel the need to get into a one-sided screaming match with whatever kind of big man upstairs that you are portraying in your mind. You might have a mental and logical breakdown, going on a late-night drinking binge to Las Vegas not taking into consideration the consequences that an underage call girl could have on the rest of your world. You could dramatically throw out pleas for consideration from the remainder of the vainglorious Facebook friends that you so lovingly cherish.
Or, you could just move on, face the facts that this is just another step in the colossal pathway of life, man up, and focus on how you handle what ever will happen next.
Your call.
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