A diary entry
Day 7
19 May 2021
20:45
A girl’s search
for the meaning of life
What is life?
I was just
finishing reading a novel that I really like, The Immortalists. I love
it for the honesty I find in it. I love it because I am able to relate it to
some hard truth in it about this life that I see. About myself. I love it
because it has opened me up a little more. Am a lot better than my last book
reading. Am growing, am changing and yes, I am evolving.
If you told me I
was going to be in my third year this year, I wouldn't have believed you
because I couldn’t think it as a possibility. It was all a dream like being in
high school was. When I was in my primary school, I looked at those in high
school and college and I said, 'I will be like them someday'. It was just talk.
Nothing serious. Now that am here, I appreciate how far I have come indeed, how
much I have done and how much I have gone through all which has brought me
here. Everything that has resulted to what I am today.
I used to dread
my past. My failures and faults. My flaws. My weaknesses. I wondered why they
existed. Why can't I just be like so and so, I kept on saying to myself as I
looked at myself in the mirror and thought 'heck, maybe tomorrow. I will figure
something else.' I was a kid, I had no knowledge about uniqueness and its
value. No knowledge of how each cannot and will never be compared to another.
That we are all just different beings all beautifully made and we just need to
embrace who we are because whether we like it or not. We are still here. Still
us and not going anywhere.
Imagine a
scenario where someone somewhat close to you dies. Maybe it's hard to do that
because you still see them or know they are there. Am here and then I hear the
news of death and all that comes to my mind is that it is not true. She is not
dead. She just can't be. I was planning on calling her today and I will. All
that is all talk. Is it shock? Or fear of death. The knowledge that it really
does exist and me having it for the first time in my life, feel it. Real. Raw.
I won't see this person again ever. Is experience really a good teacher? Not in
this way. I have never thought about it this way.
To me death has
always been an idea of a person ceasing to exist. But I have never really
thought it does happen. I have attended a funeral before, once. I was 15 then.
One of my secondary school teachers died. The last I saw him was in class
teaching us something. It was English and he so loved to teach us. I just
thought he had gone somewhere, that he was going to comeback sometime later
like he always does to teach us. He never did. Did he transfer?
Death has always
been the end of life to me. In an imagery way. But really, what is life? And
also, why should death be the end? Isn't it just a start or a new beginning of
yet another life unknown to the living because indeed, it is only to be known
when one sees it? It is the land for the dead. If living is living, talking and
everything, it is logical enough to say that death is doing nothing at all
because you are not here. But science explains its own theories about life and
death. Christians say when you die, you first go to purgatory where you wait
for the day to go into another life which is not like that of earth. I have no
idea what is believed by others. Maybe they think it is eternal peace or
paradise where there is forever a celebration. Sometimes I have trouble
thinking about the whole thing. Is there life beyond this one?
What is death
really? Apart from the obvious that it is being gone for good. Two months ago,
I fantasied about it a lot. Dying. I kept on saying I want to die. And that, in
a different sense. I wanted my heart to stop beating and for me to entirely
stop everything and then all at once begin again. Death meant me disappearing
for a little while and coming again. As if something that can be controlled. At
some point, you wake up after sleeping however long or short it can take. In a
way I thought it was going to do the world more good than bad, me disappearing.
I thought it was going to be as if I was never here.
Death is an
inevitable fact of life. Am currently drawn to it because it's like am
constantly hearing the same news everywhere. At school, home, on the social
media, in the streets when walking to somewhere. This person has died. That one
too. For some I see the loss felt by those close to the deceased. For others, I
have no idea. Maybe like how Stuart put it, a loss of a person who was always
there but whom they never really knew. Crying that they want have a
conversation that could only be had by them. I called a friend of mine last
year who suffered loss and in her voice, there was pain I have never felt and
heard before. Shock. unbelief. Grief. It can't be true, she can't be gone. I
was just talking to her. But why. Why does it have to happen that way. She just
left me. Why?
The reality of
it is just hitting me and am yet to really feel it. In a way I refuse to admit
it. Death is just a word. But then, am I implying that life is too? I don’t
want to admit that it does exist. It is here whether I like it or not. But I
still beg to differ even when it is waiting on each of us for that day to cut
the cold and invite us at his table. Or is it bed?
There is just
one thing I could relate to. The fear of aberration. The fear of uncertainty.
Not knowing what will happen next and at times, my own mind. But darling, I
tell myself every time it happens, you can't know everything!
The novel am
reading kind of made it even worse. People's death were being predicted by some
gipsy lady. These people never forgot their dates and somehow, they died on the
said dates except one because her life wasn’t completed. At some points I felt
that the whole issue, them dying on the said date had something to do with
their beliefs in what the woman said. Words have power. Words have wings. When
believed, they can do things to the brain and make you believe what isn't true
and then get to find yourself doing what you shouldn’t for some reason. Because
you have allowed your mind to stray from the truth and decided to believe in
something else in its entirety. Or was it their curiosity. Am I really going to
die on that day? and then also, some belief that lead to some self-fulfilling
prophecy. And then there was one…
A few sentences
I quoted;
*Our language
is our strength…thoughts have wings.
*Magicians
have never been good at dying. David Devant was fifty when tremors forced him
off the stage. Howard Thurston collapsed on the floor after a performance.
Houdini died of his own overconfidence: in 1926, he let an audience member
punch him in the stomach, and the blow ruptured his appendix.
*It's
'cause you can't take it. You don’t have space in your head for anyone's
problems but yours.
*I
have discovered that it is very hard to walk in obedience to God and in love
with others if my primary interest is that "I" don’t get hurt or
taken advantage of. However, when i allow God to be God in my life, He honors
three distinct promises He makes in Psalm 91:15: He'll be with me in trouble,
He'll deliver me, and He will honor me.
*Life
isn't just about defying death,' Raj says, his voice coming through the
speakers on the side of the television. 'it's also about defying yourself,
about insisting on transformation. As long as you can transform, my friends,
you cannot die. What does Clark Kent have in common with the chameleon? Right
when they are on the brink of destruction, they change. Where have they gone?
Nowhere we can see. The chameleon has become a branch. Clark Kent has become a
Superhuman
*…I
remembered the comics. How it was possible to be more than you were - more than
you stated out being. I guess one way to put it is you gave me faith. Another
is that I figured maybe, I'm not too far gone yet.'
*Most
adults claim not to believe in magic, but Klara knows better. Why else would
anyone play at permanence - fall in love, have children, buy a house - in the
face of all evidence there is no such thing? The trick is not to concert them.
The trick is to get them to admit it.
*From
control, comes freedom. From restraint comes flexibility…
*If
the prophecy is a ball, belief is its chain
---
And then there
is the exam I had today. It was the last exam for this week. Am remaining with
one exam which am writing on Monday next week. I have four days to prepare.
When I got home after today's exam, I was surprised when I asked myself to ,
'what happens now?'. What happens now that school closes next week and I will
be on holiday and then I will open again and soon I will be graduating and all.
Life is happening right in front of my eyes. But then, so what? What am I doing
about it?
It just hit me
that I was so focused on school and I got it to be my purpose. I felt I had
purpose studying for the exam. It felt good. But what now. Like if someone asks
me, 'what do you do?', and then I say, 'I go to school'. Its lame. No offence
to school. Its also just a thought.
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