The concept of immortality fascinated me as a child. Fed on mythological movies and stories before I even began to comprehend, I harboured several fantastical notions about life. I believed that I was an all-powerful immortal, that nothing could hurt me, faze me. What all these people around me referred to as death, it could never touch me or the people who I love. All of them were simply immune from it.
Such beliefs, of course, fade with time. As you grow up, the world too grows up with you. The whims of childhood pass and maturity sinks in whether you like it or not. The shelter that had been protecting you from the harsh realities of life all this while, is pulled away so gently, that you barely even notice it.
Until one day, it starts pouring and you’re drenched to the bone. Until one day, you actually lose someone close to you.
Loss is a terrible, potent thing. It’s heavy and it weighs you down, it gnaws you from within; it fills you with regrets. It is a physical feeling, one that you feel in your body, in your fingers, you feel it in your toes, your heart, in your soul. Loss is sudden, you might see it come from miles away, you might be expecting it a long time but yet, when it does happen, it’s still abrupt. A full stop in the middle of a running sentence.
Perhaps that is the greatest fallacy of mankind, you never appreciate what you have, until you irretrievably lose it. We take each other for granted all the time.
We are so often casually rude to the people around us that we don’t even realise it until much later, when it’s already too late.
The concept of immortality, therefore, still fascinates me as an adult. It offers a chance to make amends and right our wrongs, maybe even circumvent loss in the first place.
But what I hadn’t understood as a child, I understand it now, that immortality is just a myth.
An impressive literary trope made to concoct wonderful tales of fiction, with no actual merit in reality.
The real world, in truth, is transient and time bound.
We all have been given only a limited amount of time. And with what limited time we have, how difficult is it to be kind and appreciate the people that surround us, just for simply, existing? To not think too much and tell them that you love them? How difficult is it to be gentle to the fellow man, to help him in times of need, to not hold grudges or will the harm of anybody?
‘To live a life untouched by haunting regrets that nibble at our conscience’, is that not what we all want? Then why not instead of mulling over how it could have been, we think about how it should be. If there’s one thing a person learns by the loss of someone they love, is that life is awfully short. Too short to be weighed down by regrets.
So be good. Be the reason of happiness in the lives of people. And through them, experience the pleasure of a hundred lives within your one.
On second thought, immortality might not be such a big myth after all……
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