may the world remember you as someone who lived life.

Dear friend,

Some things begin with a birth and some things end with one. And those of us left to leap between their strides, as if following footprints in drifts of snow, only hope to choose what path they would have led us to, what end they could have chosen. For god makes fools or kings out of all of us, that we should only put life into its proper perspective. He grants the most able the least power and watches us stumble blindly in the trail of our dead through a lifetime until we each reach our proper destinations. But they would not have had us come this way, I do not think. Life and death, despite whatever inclination one has regarding religion, are simply different ways of comprehending existence, and we must all change our minds, now and then. Do we then stumble through existence, seeking only our kingly stature? No, for that is how fate has orchestrated us into objects, to be used as pawns, to be predictable. Our dead would not grant us knowledge to go on, but to grow, and to come to terms with what our lives mean to the world. Would they tell us all that we must be celebrities? That every single one of us must shift the future of the living world in a way we would see fit? Is that how true perfection is obtained, by virtue of history? History does not exist below the surface, in the soft boxes we’ve created for ourselves out of memory for worldly life and comfort. To be etched in history, in time, would make us immortal, steadfast. To be remembered, but not idolized is the real virtue. To die as men and women, not gods or goddesses, is where the paths of our dead now begin to lead us. For they know, immortality is a lonely, repetitious place, where our comprehension of existence strays not from life, and we are forced to relive our histories in the minds of others, as heroes or deities. Immortality is where we lose our souls, our humanity, and god crowns us kings of power, of wealth, and lets us reign, for eternity even, over our foolish estates. And, I do not think they would have us come this way. No, for the dead tell us, life is not about power, life is about life. And that is what I have learned.