RIP Kobe Bryant

I bet if I titled this post with RIP Christina Mauser a lot of people may not have clicked on the link. But, we cannot forget the fact that Kobe was not the only one in that helicopter. There were eight others who died alongside him, so from this I wonder: Why is it that the lives of certain people are valued more than others? Why is it that we assign value to life at all? Is it tragic that someone dies just because they are well known? And should we see death as something tragic or just a natural part of life? 

I mean, we all instinctively know that one day we are all going to die. That’s just a normal part of life. We just live our lives pretending that it isn’t true. We live denying the fact that one day our lives are going to end. 

I’ve experienced enough deaths over the course of my life to acknowledge the fact that death is a certainty. And I’m sure that everyone who is reading this knows this as well. But maybe there is a part of us that believes this certainty is true for everyone except for ourselves.

It’s hard to imagine that we are going to die. I mean, we only know life, so what does it really mean to be dead? What happens to us? Where do we go? Is heaven real? Will we go to hell? Reincarnation? Nothing? Something else that we cannot conceive of? 

I think about these things a lot. There was a point in my life where I was extremely depressed and I probably thought about these topics on the daily. 

It felt like I would sometimes hit a point in which I couldn’t go further. I couldn’t conceive of anything past life. My mind stopped and my brain got confused. I’m not really sure how to articulate this in a better way.

It was as if my brain hit a black hole and didn’t know where to go next. The uncertainty confused me. I felt an existential dread that lasted for infinity. All I could do at these points was distract myself with a lighter topic and try to forget what I was thinking about. 

The deeper I pondered the question of death, the more depressed I became. I wondered if life had any meaning at all if it was just going to end anyway.

I go back and forth on this question. Sometimes I believe that life is meaningful because it’s going to end eventually. And other times, I believe that life is meaningless because it will end. Maybe both realities can exist at the same time. Maybe it’s hard for our brains to handle these contradictions. Maybe paradoxes are difficult to accept in general. 

I know for sure that I have a difficult time accepting the fact that two realities that are seemingly contradictory can exist concurrently. This is why death confuses me. I cannot easily accept the fact of life and the fact of death at the same time. This is especially true when death is something that I have never experienced. And when I finally do experience it, I probably can never go back to life. Maybe some other type of life happens after death that I won’t be able to understand until I’ve experienced it first hand. 

Maybe I have a fear of uncertainty. It’s just scary to think that something that we cannot control will one day happen to all of us and we’ll just have to go along with it. We’ll never be able to turn back.

I remember going to my first funeral in kindergarten and thinking similar thoughts but not being able to articulate them clearly with my limited vocabulary. Although I am much older now, I still have a tough time fully expressing my thoughts and feelings on this subject.

I think maybe our society has a hard time talking about these topics as well. I think it’s hard for us to talk about anything too heavy. Maybe this is an overgeneralization, or it could be my own Western perspective. Who knows? 

All I know is, when someone famous dies, everyone on social media is extremely upset. They cannot believe that fact that someone famous died. When someone close to us dies, their friends and family are upset because they cannot believe that someone they knew and cared about passed away. It’s like we forget entirely that this is just a natural part of life. Of course, it’s sad to never be able to see or talk to someone again. I get it. I’ve experienced enough death to understand the pain associated with losing someone close to me. But, from this, I wonder why we are so shocked when it ultimately happens?

Did we not appreciate these people enough when they were around? Did we think that our experiences together would last forever? Or, have we as a society pushed death so far out of our minds that the mere thought of it is too much to handle? 

I think we should talk about these things more. They are, after all, one major aspect of life that unites us all. It doesn’t matter who you are. Whether you are Kobe Bryant or, according to an article on NY Times, “A college baseball coach and his wife and daughter,” your life is temporary and your death is certain.