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avevale_intelligencer"'Death is what gives life meaning'? You're seriously saying that to me? That's your conclusion based on however many centuries of thought you've given to the matter? Okay, then, here's a question. What is the actual meaning that death gives to life? What meaning will my life have after I'm dead that it didn't have before I died? Because my thinking, my feeling on this, is that it's what you do while you're alive that gives your life meaning, it's what you say and what you think and what you do before you die, and what death does, the purpose and function of death, is to stop you doing and thinking and saying any more, it's to end the meaning in your life, to put a limit on it and curtail it, kind of like the full stop that ends a sentence, and you'll have noticed that I haven't ended this sentence, I haven't used a full stop, and I could have done, I could have put in lots of full stops and made it into lots of little sentences, and it would have meant exactly the same, but the thing about life, the real bugger about life, is that we only ever get one sentence. We only ever get one sentence. We. Only. Ever. Get. One. Sentence. A life sentence, ha ha. And too many of us, far too many of us, never get to finish it, so our sentence, our sentience, ends up meaning nothing. Death is the full stop that ends our sentience, often before we've even got to the verb. Death is what takes away the meaning from our lives.
"Death has functions, useful ones. It stops the planet getting even more choked up with life than it is already, it frees up the matter and the energy that's held in our bodies so that it can nourish other life, it ends pain, it provides closure for lives that have long ago stopped meaning anything, sentences that have just become word salad. Death is useful. Nobody denies that. But to say that 'death is what gives life meaning'...well, people who say that, they either haven't thought about death at all, or else, like you, they've thought about it for so long that they've lost sight of whatever sensibility they might have had, lost sight of how life feels. It's nonsense. It's meaningless nonsense. And nobody should believe nonsense.
"Believe that when we die we go on to another place. Believe that when we die we're born again. Believe that when we die we rejoin the great cosmic mind. Believe any of that. But never, never, ever, believe that death is what gives life meaning, and don't try to make me believe it. And don't ever try to stop me fighting against death. Because my sentence is nowhere near ready for a full stop."
"Death has functions, useful ones. It stops the planet getting even more choked up with life than it is already, it frees up the matter and the energy that's held in our bodies so that it can nourish other life, it ends pain, it provides closure for lives that have long ago stopped meaning anything, sentences that have just become word salad. Death is useful. Nobody denies that. But to say that 'death is what gives life meaning'...well, people who say that, they either haven't thought about death at all, or else, like you, they've thought about it for so long that they've lost sight of whatever sensibility they might have had, lost sight of how life feels. It's nonsense. It's meaningless nonsense. And nobody should believe nonsense.
"Believe that when we die we go on to another place. Believe that when we die we're born again. Believe that when we die we rejoin the great cosmic mind. Believe any of that. But never, never, ever, believe that death is what gives life meaning, and don't try to make me believe it. And don't ever try to stop me fighting against death. Because my sentence is nowhere near ready for a full stop."