You die today!
In our world ,death is certain. Yet it is something we do not care to think of, something to put off until it snatches us up. We have innumerable facilities to prolong life, for we never know when it will all end. We know we will die but we don’t know when we will die and from that uncertainty springs hope as well as despair.So it begs the question, is it a fate too cruel to not know when we die?
Imagine a world without such shackles where we knew the starting point as well as the finishing point and all that mattered was what we made of it. A bit difficult to envision, isn’t it?
For one thing, if you knew you were going to die before finishing high school or college, you would never go for that pesky business at all. Can you imagine a conversation between friends that goes like
A: “dude, we have a buttload of work to finish by this monday, no way can we finish this.”
B: “Sucks for you, i have nothing to worry,I will by dead on sunday.”
A: “Why did you even sign up for this,then?”
B: “well,……….shit.”
For another, Hospitals wouldn’t have to deal with fatality. It’s either their time to die or it’s not. The world would be completely different from ours. The medical facilities and technological revolution that took place would never have happened if not for our unwillingness to die. After all Necessity is the mother of invention.We would have advanced in a lot of other ways, maybe even more so than we have now,but our medical system would have surely been lackluster.
But the most important change in our history would be the wars. Wars have always been pointless but there has been nothing to actually point out the pointlessness. But this world does it for us, our death days are prefixed and nothing can change it. A war where you definitely know how many will die and who will die is a foolish venture no sane person would take part in. But it is not to say this world would be better, humans have always been destructively creative and could easily come up with worse alternatives.
The fundamental difference would be a disinterest in death. While death is a grave topic in our world, it would not be a big deal here. It would just be the end of a journey, something that happens. Life is magical only because we know it is fleeting. Every moment maybe our last and so is a precious commodity to be savored. Take away that and is life even worth living?
This is one possible scenario of how our world could have turned out.
The way more likely scenario : We would be frightened to know our death date and would be running around like headless chickens…..
Maybe it is for the best that we never know when our story ends.
-Rigved Manoj
