Mortality

It is a bleak and cruel day when a child discovers his or her own mortality. When the child realises that the Human body was created to rot, that it has an uncertain expiration; to understand that one day, after a lifetime of toil and strife, all that would remain is his or her own remains. That is if he or she is blessed enough to have experienced an entire lifetime.

I've always been afriad of death. I think it's because my simple mind cannot comprehend the concept of death - its the sheer nothingness after one's death (or so I envision, or rather cannot envision) that boggles me so. To not feel, see, smell, touch nor taste. To be numb even to the very sensation of numbness.

But the irony of it is my fear of death does not seem to have any effect on my valuation of Life. Too often do I take life and all that it offers, all that it gives, all that it brings, for granted. Too commonly do I not treasure what pleasures Life bares. Must I, as I seem to in most things, learn its preciousness through its loss? Can I?

Rethinking it, I think it would be a bleaker and even more cruel day when one discovers his or her own mortality and that he or she has taken Life in vain, belittled it, left it unappreciated and undervalued. Problem is that he or she is no longer a child, but a man or woman.