Colors of Life & Death

What really gives meaning to life? I wonder, could it be death? If life is defined by death just as a line or ray is defined by its ending (or lack thereof,) then what if death no longer held any meaning? Would life too, no longer hold any meaning, just as a ray would not be a ray if it did not end and a line would not be a line if it ended?

Death means a lot of things to a lot of people. Granted, none of us has actually experienced death in the flesh but we have been exposed to it throughout our lives. In fact, (as I’ve stated earlier,) I believe death is what actually defines life. Defining in the sense of limiting, shaping or moulding, and giving change and color to life by means of contrast. The exchange of two contrasting opposites will yield a full range of variables just as white and black together create new shades of color. Rather, it is the spectrum of colors that is found between the two contrasts, black and white. Similarly life is found between birth and death. And along the path of life there are many such opposites. If life and death are opposites, then between the two we will find joy and sorrow, comfort and suffering, gain and loss.

So if our entire lives are shaped by the exchange between two opposites, what then happens if those fundamentally different, intrinsically contrasting opposites were to change themselves? What if white was no longer white and black no longer black? What if birth and death were no longer birth and death? If birth was death and death was birth? How then would we define our lives?

Most often we tend to view birth as the beginning of life; symbolizing the good of joys and bounties to come. But frankly, birth is the beginning of suffering and sacrifice. It is when we are thrown into this world that we develop desires and attachment to things we cannot have so already we are losing more than we wish to gain. We are exposed to so many ideas and desires arise for which nothing can be done. We are losing the moment we are born, one day at a time, closer to death. That would, of course, be a dreaded thing if death were (as we define it) as being a bottomless void of nothingness. But even if that were the case, is not nothingness better than losing? Neutrality over pain and loss? No conscious awareness at all as opposed to conscious grief? Were this to be true, death would, as it seems, be better than life. But if death were a pit of hellfire, then it would seem that life is worth more joy than death as there is more to lose in death than in life. If death was the beginning of endless torture, then we should seek to live our lives to the utmost capacity in true happiness and gratefulness. And yet if death was the beginning of true happiness or at the very least the end of all suffering, then death would seem to be the true life.

Because from the perspective of loss, life only contains losing - there is nothing to be gained. The moment we are born we are given things of which, throughout life, we slowly start to lose. We slowly lose our abilities, our memories, our relationships, and eventually everything we’ve experienced in life (through death.) There is only net loss. But from another perspective we have only to gain from life. We are born with givens yes, but those givens contain no meaning until filled with the experiences of use found in life. Our five senses are essentially senseless until used. For what is taste without its subject? Touch without something to touch? Sight without something to behold? Hearing without sounds to process? And smell without odors or fragrances? And what of those senses if they contain no meaning? What is the taste of chicken without its meaning to you? (Does it taste good or bad? Do you enjoy it or dislike it?) What is the touch of fire and the touch of a lover if one did not hurt and the other was not pleasurable? What of sight if seeing pleasurable things did not lead to good thoughts and if seeing bad things to unpleasant ones? Similarly what of the other senses if they did not create contrasts of good and bad and everything in between? For it is what is in-between that holds the meaning. Good cannot be considered as “good” unless there was bad and everything beneath it just as bad would not exist if there were no good nor anything above it. Now if there is good and bad, then there is also better or worse in-between. A thing cannot be defined as better or worse if it has no contrast to compare itself to. A good thing can still be considered as good even if there are things that are better than it (making it worse but still good.) But if exposed to enough “better” things, what was initially considered as “good” can now be considered as bad, worse, or even worst. Being shocked is a bad feeling but how can mild electric shock possibly feel good if you were never exposed to it? Maybe it might feel better compared to being burned as “template experience.” So now being mildly shocked is bad but still better than being burned. And if I had to either be shocked, burned, cut, or beaten, I might even conclude that the mild shock is the best! The point is, the experience or situation had to be compared to another experience and hence derived its meaning. Meanings are given to experiences by way of contrasting them to initial template experiences (e.g- the example of the man who was burned then shocked.) And these template experiences constantly shift our definitions of what is good, bad, better, worse, best, and worst.

The same can be said of life and death, what is considered living and what is considered dying is determined by shades of meaning (good/bad, better/worse, etc.) Since meanings are relative to an individual’s experience and perspective, it is hard if not impossible to assume an agreeable constant for standard of living and dying. One million people may agree that sacrificing your life for a loved one is suicide and a waste of life. But what is considered as a ‘waste’ is left to interpretation. Maybe that person had already wasted his life according to his own understanding and now finds meaning and purpose in sacrificing it for a loved one. So if we cannot measure or compare our ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ to that of others’, then how is it that we relate so well? It is a miracle that we can even understand each other, let alone agree with one another! My ‘goods’ may be in agreement with the ‘goods’ of others and yet contrast with the ‘bads’ of others, while yet being ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than others’ goods’ and ‘bads’. Just like colors, we may agree on the color itself but dispute the shade. And this is how we communicate and understand one another. If black and white were not our contrasting anchors, we would not have colors to agree on; no colors to dispute on. But the colors themselves create the meanings and the agreements and disputes. Without them there would be nothing. In the same way, if birth and death were not our contrasting anchors, how would we know what is life and what is death and which experiences lie closer to one as opposed to the other within the spectrum?

I come back now to the theory of loss and gain again. Is life ultimately a big loss or gain for us? And is it the same for death? Life can either be good or bad compared to death, while one is better/worse than the other. According to the net loss perspective, life is nothing but loss and nothing is gained from it (or at least all things gained are lost through death.) This is under the assumption that death is nothingness and the human conscience (as we know it) ceases to exist. For example, any number divided by Zero becomes undefined; and that is death. However, if the quotient is undefined then the whole equation becomes undefined and becomes a meaningless operation. If death is undefined than so is life, but if life is undefined then life and death both become meaningless. So then what was the purpose of acquiring all this meaning in life if death is the great Zero divisor? Clearly as we have seen, if death has no meaning, then life has no meaning just as how a dividend becomes undefined if the divisor equals Zero then the quotient equals nothing. If death has no meaning, then life is pointless and it may as well be ended at any time since there is only loss. But that cannot be the case because we know life has meaning, we all have acquired meaning within our lives; meanings and definitions of all sorts of things. So the dividend has a value, no doubt about it. However, death is only given meaning within life itself. There is no pre-life manual or post-partum debriefing. All things must be defined between birth and death. Life, therefore, gives meaning to all things even itself. There is a number that acts in exactly the same way, it is the number One. One is the basis and definition of all numbers, for each number and definition is derived from the One. Two consists of two One’s, Three of three One’s, Four of four One’s and so on ad infinitum. So One is the quintessential meaning of all things. A thing is neither considered good or bad, better or worse except that it is X-degrees better or worse than something else, and all are determined by the One degree templates.

So it must be that if life has a value, then death too must have a value since we are giving meaning to everything in life. I am giving meaning to death in this very passage. Death then has a value, it is not the Zero divisor. There is however, only one birth and only one death for each individual but there are an infinite number of possibilities for life. Death then, should have at least one meaning. That would mean that whatever number of meanings acquired in life, death would simplify those meanings to be equal or less. For example, say the average person acquires over 100,000,000,000,000 meanings in life, if death is only 1 of those meanings, or at most a couple, then the net is either 100,000,000,000,000 meanings or less. Now what exactly is meant by “net meanings?” Net meanings are meanings which still have value after death. If death is not nothingness, then death has meaning and its meaning can only be compared to the countless number of meanings one has acquired throughout life. Which is more valuable? The net meanings acquired in life or the meaning of death? It depends on how death is defined. Now it cannot be that both life and death have infinite meanings since theoretically, we can never know until both life and death are experienced. As far as we are aware, there is no meaning before life and no meaning after death [not to be confused with meaning in death,] all meanings are acquired within life. That is to say, all values are only defined between birth and death and that birth and death themselves are values given meaning within life. There are, however, an infinite number of values left undefined within life, there are meanings left unexplored. Death is a value with limited meanings but cannot be undefined. It is defined upon experience. It may well be that whatever net meaning was acquired throughout life will also be acquired at death; making infinity divided by infinity equal One.

In other words, death can never have more meaning than life since it is through life that we acquire meaning on an infinite array of values whereas death is only one of those values. Life is the sum of all values. It must then be the case that death will carry on our meanings that we’ve acquired throughout life. It can never amount to Zero or nothingness. Death may well reduce our meanings to the ones that were important enough to continue beyond life, and that may even be only one thing, one meaning, or it can be much much more. So is life a net loss or gain? Givens are lost in life but meanings can only be gained and are never lost. You cannot lose a definition or meaning of something, it can only be replaced, expanded, or modified in some way. Life is the summation of positive or negative meanings - either good or bad. But since meaning itself is a gain by nature of its being, net meaning must yield a positive number. That is to say, there can only be so much bad meaning that can be derived from life as compared to the countless positive meanings we are unaware of such as the meanings of thoughts, dreams, feelings, emotions, etc. And although each of those can be divided among good and bad, the net good outweighs the net bad. There are those who claim that bad meanings and experiences dominate over good ones. But my argument is that that is simply because there are so many good meanings in their lives that the few bad ones stick out like a sore thumb and steal all the attention away. Afterall, when one reflects, is stressed, or worried, do they contemplate all the good meanings in life or mostly the bad? As stated before, bad can only exist if there is good. There must be good experiences hidden deep within themselves that they have become blinded to by their focus on the bad. All this, however, is simply my observation. If you are one of the unfortunate ones to see nothing but bad meanings in all things, please search for positive meaning in this attempt and add something positive to your experience in life.