Musings on Mortality

I had a meeting with a dead man today. He was surprisingly well spoken. When he inquired about the status of our project, I was very glad that I could focus on the numbers on my screen and not on his face. Or, what was left of it. The rest had simply been melted away. While busting out my best impression of a young urban professional, I concentrated very hard not to imagine the things that lay behind the skin-colored headband and the dark glasses. If you closed your eyes, it was very easy to recall his pedigreed CV, his Ivy League education, his cunning deal making and his success in his C-level role. Without your eyes betraying you, you might have seen him for the incredibly sharp and driven man he was. But if you opened your eyes, a freak would stare back at you. And that´s how the world sees him, every single day. And of course, he knows it. And yet, he walked upright. That got me thinking. Here we had a man who had everything us monkeys aspire to have. A comp in the millions. A CV to get green with envy. A front seat to one of the biggest deals in the industry since the Crisis. And yet, by chance, fate, the Hand of God, call it whatever you like, he had been mutilated beyond recognition. And now all his achievements had been made hollow, drenched with bile and pain. So why do we struggle? If Fortuna can lay us down any second and take everything from us, why do we keep on pushing and cursing and shouting and struggling to make it? I´ll tell you why: Because it is only struggle, good struggle, that makes life worth living. What good is prestige, if not for the countless hours you put into your work and your social circle? What good is money, if you have not earned it by yourself, with your fight against fate? What good is a life you have not taken from the cold, uncaring hands of the Reaper himself? If you do that, you can walk upright, even as a dead man.

Cheers, Matchwood