r H Y nolite

it's 2 in the morning and i've just finished supper, woke up from a long nap that seemed to last for only a minute ( how time flies when you are sleeping, there again proof of the flexibilty of time ). how time flies! it felt like only a blink of the eyes between orientation 2002 and prelim 2003. i can still remember how bored i was at the orientation, then the mad struggle to appeal for a place in vj after i found out i was posted to tpjc, then the mid years, my short but very meaningful stint with the basketball team, then the promo's which i completely flunked, then the 'threat' of having to drop f math ( would teachers count for terrorist in this sense? ), then the block test, now the prelims.

prelims. then a levels. then... well... for pride and country eh? the big N and the big S.

and from there? university, and then the start of the end: you slave your arse away for the something as transient as money. until you die. oh, and in the process not to mention marriage, precreation, upbringing, then watching THEM get married and work THEIR arse off just to stay alive and be well fed. until YOU die. die. the end. the ultimate destination for any person's life.

yeah, there i go again getting freaked out about the inevitable end. the point is that i simply cannot get the thought off my mind. if everything were to boil down to you lying in a coffin six feet under, what's the point of taking so many exams? what's the point of looking for a well-paying job? what's the point?

sometimes i question the existence of life. why the heck are we here? just why? if there was a god, what the hell was he thinking putting intelligence on a small round water filled planet, and then making that intelligence mortal? if everything was to end up dead and decayed and forgotten, why bother living? we might as well just go straight to the end and jump off a building or shoot our brains out with a pistol, right? save the trouble and sadness and experiences of life! just shoot me!

so why do we still do what we do now, going about our lives striving for a good life for not only oneself but also for the family too?

you might disagree, but human advancement/development has always been motivated by death. that's my opinion. ever since humans came into existence, it's always about trying to avoid death. look at the primitive people, life was really dangerous then, with wild beasts and other humans constantly going for your throat. there was a possibility you could die any minute. so you keep your guards up perpetually. but you cannot stay up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, just to ensure that you do not die in your sleep, albeit an unnatural death. so... what do you do? you form tribes, and invent language so you can communicate and assign guard duties. and just like that you have the civilisation, language, and survival strategies! the other matter was about food. without food, you die. now that there's more than one person you need to feed, you will therefore need to kill more, or kill larger animals for more food. but with your bare hands, you can hardly strangle a kangaroo to death. and thus the flint stone weapons and spears gets invented.

the story could go on and on, but it is quite evident that the main motivation has always been about survival and the delay of death. you had alchemy and the elixir of life in ancient europe, you had the emperor qin and his mad search for a similar pill in china, and right now, with genetic research just taking off, everybody is talking about living for 200 300 years in the near future. but i ask: why not go 'all the way'? from the way i look at it, immortality is just about to knock on our door. and i sure do hope it happens before I fuckin go.

life has much to offer. too much to offer for one to be unable to experience everything in a short life span of 80-90 years. i want to see the world, then experience it, and then live it. and by simple calculation, i would need at least 300 years to accomplish that. plus, i still want to create and share life, so that would mean another 200 years. and considering my 'eagerness' to experience death, i would be happy to live a life of 800 years. but come to think about it, when i am 799 years old, i would STILL tremble with the fear of dying, so why not just live forever?

sounds far fetched? i don't know, you decide, but i sure would be the happiest man alive if i could live forever. or at least have the power to decide when i want to go. then again, i might decide not to die at all. =)