We All End Up Dead

There is no successful end to life. Whatever you own, whatever position you have, no matter how many people love or hate you, the inevitable truth is that at the end of your journey, you will be dead. There is no escaping this reality. Nothing is permanent.

Conventional wisdom, at least in capitalist society, is that he or she that dies with the most toys wins. I reject the notion that the measure of a life is to be found in its final possessions. The "great" pharaohs died and then were entombed in pyramids along with symbols of their possessions. The irrefutable truth, however, is that they ended up dead - no more or less dead than anyone else. Nothing they owned accompanied them beyond death.

If, in death, we are all the same, no special meaning of a life can be found in it's end. Likewise, we all come into this world as babies. We bring with us nothing. We leave with nothing. Where do we find meaning in life, if any meaning is to be found? As an existentialist, I see myself as the creator of that meaning, my life as a canvas to paint upon, and the way I walk the path of life, a path I've chosen to walk, is an expression of that meaning. Life is not a destination. Life is everything except the destination (as the destination is death). The meaning of life is to be found in the journey from birth to death. It is measured not in the things or powers that are accumulated along the way, only to be lost at the destination, but in what has been experienced along the way, and how it has been experienced.