Requiem for Theseus
I'm not afraid of dying.
Really, I'm not.
I have very fragmented memories of my earlier years. Most of them revolve around the same stock images we all have of our childhoods, T.V. Shows and parents fighting, but nothing of any significance to anyone but me.
So let's ignore that.
I've been writing for around eight years now. Well, writing anything I'd be proud of, anyways. But the older my stuff is, the weirder it seems to me. I feel less and less like the person who wrote or drew these things in the first place, and I know why. It's because the person I was, then, is dead. Literally. The ideas and attitudes I used to have got swallowed by new ones as life went on. Things get pushed out of my head to make room for new things, which in turn get pushed out by something new. All of our dreams and thoughts and feelings come from wherever they come from and then either get turned into something - art, music, literature, our jobs or our actions - or dissipate. We don't really exist in the first place, since all we are in the end is just the sum of our experiences or whatever else goes on that breeds our personalities. All the cells in your body die and get replaced over and over and over again, so that you're literally not the same person you were ten years ago. Ever wonder why you remember things differently? Ever wonder why when you revisit things from years ago, they're nothing like what you remembered? It's because your neurons are playing telephone with your memories, creating a life you never really had and something you never really were. We die all the time, little by little, without noticing.
So, no. Dying isn't scary.
But being alive is. Being eaten and recycled, over and over and over, by new experiences and events and new cells, that's being alive.
And if you think about it, long enough, it's absolutely horrifying beyond comprehension.
Really, I'm not.
I have very fragmented memories of my earlier years. Most of them revolve around the same stock images we all have of our childhoods, T.V. Shows and parents fighting, but nothing of any significance to anyone but me.
So let's ignore that.
I've been writing for around eight years now. Well, writing anything I'd be proud of, anyways. But the older my stuff is, the weirder it seems to me. I feel less and less like the person who wrote or drew these things in the first place, and I know why. It's because the person I was, then, is dead. Literally. The ideas and attitudes I used to have got swallowed by new ones as life went on. Things get pushed out of my head to make room for new things, which in turn get pushed out by something new. All of our dreams and thoughts and feelings come from wherever they come from and then either get turned into something - art, music, literature, our jobs or our actions - or dissipate. We don't really exist in the first place, since all we are in the end is just the sum of our experiences or whatever else goes on that breeds our personalities. All the cells in your body die and get replaced over and over and over again, so that you're literally not the same person you were ten years ago. Ever wonder why you remember things differently? Ever wonder why when you revisit things from years ago, they're nothing like what you remembered? It's because your neurons are playing telephone with your memories, creating a life you never really had and something you never really were. We die all the time, little by little, without noticing.
So, no. Dying isn't scary.
But being alive is. Being eaten and recycled, over and over and over, by new experiences and events and new cells, that's being alive.
And if you think about it, long enough, it's absolutely horrifying beyond comprehension.
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