Numbers are everything to us so it seems. I was born on the 9th month of the 27th day of 1983. I grew up going to school all the way up to the 12th grade. I am 24 years old. I make an income, and it's in numbers too.
All we ever do is count. I have 2 parents and 2 brothers, which makes for 4 immediate family members. I've had 2 parking tickets, 2 speeding tickets, 2 wrecks, 2 surgeries, and 2 broken bones. Zero is the tally on my detentions in high school. 6 is my quota on dogs, but 10 is the total number of pets I have owned. I have a few different bank accounts, which adds up to a certain amount.
Numbers count…literally…
I would like to thank Freddie Mercury and Queen for begging such a relevant question as "who wants to live forever?" Not that they were, by any means, the first to highlight this, as it has been scrutinized, standardized, and categorized in so many different ways throughout the history of history. Before dissecting such a query, it is probably best to decide what one means by "forever". That's a heck of a lot of counting if there ever was. So, Queen was probably asking, who, with all the pain and suffering experienced in this life, could really want to live forever? As Mercury was currently living with AIDS, I can only imagine that this question specifically haunted him. I mean, when everything in life is about counting numbers, and all you know in life is despair, then forever is just too high an integer .
I never really thought my days were numbered…
When I was about six or seven years old, I discovered that my grandmother was sick. She had been diagnosed with a debilitating disorder that had effects very similar to that of Parkinson's disease. Then, about a year later, my grandfather, on the other side of the family, passed away. For the first time in my life, I had to confront sickness and death. I began to perceive that, just as my grandfather had gone, so too was my grandmother heading down the same road. Year by year her body weakened and her voice grew softer. As I was told, her days were numbered. And when I was 13, I added a bit more first-hand knowledge to this phrase as my grandmother parted for Paradise.
Henry David Thoreau once said that "death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident. It is as common as life." Honestly, for the majority of my years, I think I have considered death to be the great tragedy of life. But perhaps I have always been wrong…
For Mr. Mercury, forever was a number that could be counted, just like everything else in life. Granted, the counting would never end. Yet, his view of death mutually excluded his view of forever. In other words, there had to be one or the other. Either one died, and there was no forever. Or one never died, and forever became actualized. Interestingly enough, Mercury did not view death with the utmost distaste. Rather, death to him was a way out of his grief. Death was his ally. While I applaud the recognition of death as something that may actually be valuable, I must be cautious in accepting Mercury's interpretation of forever.
As Mark Twain said, "The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time." You see, maybe death would not be so tragic if our fear were not so great…
Artificial immortality is what most of us have sought.. We fear death to the point of nearly not believing in it. We have mentally disposed of it. It's almost like if I don't think about it, then maybe it won't apply to me. Sure, if I am honest with myself, I'll die someday. But as for now, I am climbing Mount Olympus on the path to immortality. I don't have time to stop and consider something so depressing, something that could prematurely end my journey to the top. You see, I'm reaching for numbers. I want to be the best, or as we might say, 1st, in all that I do. And I'm probably not much different than most others who are out there climbing the money mountain, seeing how many dollars they can count up. But the problem is that we are all seeking something artificial. We do all of this pretending that our days won't end, that there will always be tomorrow. We need this to be true if we are going to keep on counting those numbers, if we are going to keep adding up our awards, our achievements, our successes. Thus, death becomes our greatest fear, our greatest foe. And forever is still a number to us in this case.
We pass the time like we are going to live forever…and maybe we just will…
When I was 19, one of my friend's brothers passed. He was 17. I had to stop and wonder what it was that made my stomach churn at the thought of knowing he was gone. People say that the young have all of their hopes and dreams ahead of them, that when they die, a little bit of the future dies with them. I don't know if this always works though. Martin Luther King Jr. said he had a dream, but he never saw it completed. But his children have, and his grandchildren, and hopefully their children will too. His death seems to have stirred his dreams, so much so that others took up that cause. And what of the first Christians; they called many of their early followers martyrs, meaning a "witness made in blood". If death is always so tragic, then what also makes it so powerful?
It would seem that we are all caught up in a constant struggle to control life and death. Things could be a bit different if we would learn to surrender to them instead…
Maybe it is better to think of death as a completion to whatever life we have lived. Maybe death is not the end of our days. Rather, it is our completion of something that is not measured by time or numbers. It's not an end of hope, but the new beginning of it. Sure, not everyone lives to the age of 70, so not everyone makes as much money or has as many friends or serves as many people. 17 years might not offer as many opportunities to capture the world as 70 years does. Still, both are equally complete. Each of us is allotted a certain amount of time. The truth is, most of us won't be working for the same amount of time. But the focus here is not the amount of time; it is the work. It is what we do during that time. It is who we are during that time. It is how we love and give during that time. This is what makes every life complete. Even a dying infant may touch a life in such a way that carries itself into eternity. Death is what our hope lies in, that just as we must live to die, we must also die to live.
If the numbers are added up, we cannot help but think that maybe the total amount of grief we see in this life overshadows the amount of good. But maybe there is hope that overshadows all of this…
Every life lived shall bring a little piece of heaven or a little piece of hell. You see, when numbers are the centerfold, then we'll spend our time focusing on counting everything, on seeing how many people we cured or how many people we infected. When numbers are the focus, then I become the center of my own world, trying desperately to achieve the greatest number. In the end, this philosophy would only divide us further as it is a giant match to the death, all against all, each of us set against one another, making our greatest attempt to be the best at the expense of everyone else. And in the process, evil becomes us.
The king and the peasant do not die the same death. One is bathed in roses and other may have no bath at all. But even "he who dies with the most toys, still dies"…
When we learn to see things in a broader spectrum, when we learn to look at life and death not as a certain number of days from one point to the next, but as one entire measure, as one whole entity, then we begin to see everything more clearly. Life then becomes about serving, about interacting, about the attitude and not the altitude. Put more simply, life becomes meaningful, as does death, when our value is not placed on a premium of how high we go but about how far we reach.
Maybe life and death aren't rivals. Maybe even death and forever aren't rivals either. Instead, maybe they are all counterparts, working with one another to give birth to one great triumph…
It's true, my days are numbered, And numbers do count…literally. But you know what, it's not the number that counts…figuratively. So, to answer Queen's question, "who wants to live forever?", well, everyone does. This is our hope, that one day everything will be just fine, that there exists a haven for our dreams, a place where evil can no longer drag us down, one that will give meaning to everything we have done and everything that we do. Some have committed the error of associating forever with an unending number of parts, like one day after another with an unending amount of torment and despair. Yet, when forever is understood as eternity, as one divine whole, as the hope which frees us from torment and despair, everything else becomes illumined. You see, forever is not a number, and it is not something that can be counted. Forever is not even a time. Forever is a place; it is the sanctuary of our souls, the hope that wells up within us, what we all long for, that which exists outside of numbers, and outside of time. And for the one with Faith, this is exactly what forever is: It is hope in the God Eternal.