Everything has its beginning and an end. Whether these
beginnings and ends are known or not. The
principle of Life and Death is a cycle where we can clearly see an example
of a beginning and an end, and an example of nonexistence of the material
meaning of "forever".
In which these phenomena impossible for people to escape. Death, the
end of the cycle is the most hardly acceptable occurrences in the life of every
living being here on earth, because we can't accept the fact that we can no
longer experience everything that we have while we are still living. We
also can't accept the fact that we have still unfinished business
here on earth. Even though our business here on earth is done, we still
force ourselves, unknowingly "to create business" here in the
world of the living. However, we may never know if our business
here on Earth is done or not.
But between life and death of a human, people are dying to work for a
living. The ironic contrast where most of the people are currently living in.
In the course of our stay here on earth, we live to attain the Maslow 's
hierarchy of needs, before even we meet the end of the cycle. Unfortunately,
many of us can't even attain the second level of the hierarchy, and many
are even dying just to attain the primary level.
As a rational being, it is in our instinct and in our thinking that we
must work to live, in order to put something inside of our rumbling stomach.
Yet it does not all end in working to have food, there are still other
physiological needs to be filled in order for us to live normally such as
shelter, water, and electricity.
These basic factors of the Maslow's Hierarchy primary level, people
are dying to work in order to attain these and survive. What more if they work in education,
transportation, and communication needs?
We as a human being has our own goals and aspirations in life. We
experience all kinds of emotions such as stress, sorrow and hopelessness in order
just to reach those goals and aspirations, aside from experiencing the same
stress in order for us to provide our personal needs.
Why do we work hard? Get stressed in life and endure all kinds of
negative emotions, if we will die anyway?
Why do we need to suffer in surviving life and in attaining our wants,
if we will all end as a corpse lying six feet below the ground.
We will all end as a fertilizer or a dust enclosed in the jar.
We may end as a corpse lying in a mansion, or we may end as a corpse
weighted under the river.
Last all souls day, I visited our ancestral cemetery in the La Loma
Cemetery, one of the oldest Catholic cemetery in the Philippines. Some of the
remains in that cemetery have been buried since the time of the Spanish
occupation dated since 1800's. Up to this date some of them are intact, and
some of them, unfortunately, have been buried by time and dirt seeing no trace
of remains being buried underneath. Knowing that these cadavers in the past,
are prominent and powerful people during their time, since the La Loma Cemetery
is a resting place for the rich and powerful during that time. But, what
happened after years have passed? There are no signs that the remains
underneath this tomb is a rich and powerful man, it seems that their caretakers
and relatives have passed away and there is no one for it to take care of their
graves.
We can see here that no matter how rich and powerful you are, no
matter how famous you are, in the end you will die and will be forgotten by
time.
However, if you live your life happy and doing what your heart wants,
even if you die today you will not regret and you will not worry.
Some of us may have a good and high paying job, that can support and
provide our material needs and wants. Yet, they are not happy since they have
not done what they really want and love. They've done their job for the sake of
living comfortably and luxuriously.
Lastly, if you have done what you really want and love, furthermore,
if you shared these good things that you love others. You will die happily,
worry free and you will live forever in the hearts and minds of the love ones
you left here on Earth.
