Is there permanence?

A little over a year ago I watched my grandfather's limp body carried out of his bedroom and into the back of a hurse. I stood there with my grandma, my mom, dad, and sisters. I was crying because I knew he was dead, but I didn't fully understand the concept. Standing next to my grandma, I heard her exclaim, "He's never going to come home again!" Even though I knew this was true in my mind, I didn't accept the fact that is was real. Even to this day I still expect my grandpa to walk through our kitchen door carrying a box of donuts for us to eat. I can still hear his low voice saying, "And we're off, like a herd of turtles!" whenever I pull out of the driveway. It's occasions like these when you realize how permanent death is. until you come face to face with it, you never truly understand.

Even though we are all mortals, we do not take that fact into consideration when we go about our day to day lives. As a teenager, I can say that me and others alike don't fully understand how short life is. We all have the mind set that nothing is ever going to happen to us, that we are invincible. As someone who is still very young, we don't experience death as much as older people do. Take Enkidu's reaction to his death for example. He didn't truly understand his mortality until he was on his deathbed (pg. 91). He was always a mortal throughout the entire novel, but he never came to terms with it because he never thought death was going to happen to him.

Our world also tries to hide the fact that everybody grows old and eventually dies. Everywhere you look there are ads telling you to buy anti-aging cream that will give you younger looking skin in just 7 days!! You never see any TV commercials for a cemetery or a gravestone maker. No one likes to talk about death or face the fact that it will eventually happen. And when the few brave souls who try to bring up the subject it is, more often than not, quickly shut down with the comment, "It's not going to happen for a while so lets not worry about it now." But you can't stop it, no matter how much cream you lather on your body.

Because we have gotten so good at ignoring death, we have lost sight of the fact that our world isn't permanent. Everything about our lives is constantly changing; whether it be climate changes or technological ones. Time is continuing to move forward whether we like it or not. And, time doesn't care if we are ready to accept our fate. When you study nature and its past you can see the cycles that it has gone through. Approximately 99.9% of the world's various species have gone extinct. And that was nature's doing. As humans, we try to keep everything the same, fearing change. Maybe we should take a lesson from the animals that are considered "beneath" us for once. They don't seem to have a problem with dying, in fact, they seem to have embraced that fact.

I once asked this same grandfather what he thought of the life he lived and if he had any regrets. He told me that life was too short to regret anything that you did; that what happens happens for a reason. He also said that everything you do has some sort of hidden lesson and its your job to find that lesson and master it. He then told me that one of his favorite lessons to learn was the art of passing on his wisdom. He said that was the greatest thing that life had ever taught him to do. To my grandfather, passing on his wisdom to me and others around me was what gave his life meaning. And I agree with him. Even though we all die in the end, its what we do during the time that we have that counts. They are always going to be people who surpass you in life so why not pass along your experiences to them? Its the passing on of your knowledge to those around you that gives life its meaning.