WHAT THE HELL?

THOUGHTS ON LIFE AND DEATH
I don’t believe in ghosts, and I don’t believe in Life after Life. If it happens, I’m open to it, but I’m not living my life in expectation of or preparation for that. Whether there’s life later or not has no effect on this life, this world. We will die, only that is certain. In the end, someone will have to go through all the material possessions we’ve accumulated, and decide which ones are trash, which ones are worth selling, and which ones should be given to charity. Yeah, those were good shoes, but now that they have the imprint of our feet, no one will want them. By the time this sorter reaches the end of your junk, they’ll just start throwing everything away. THAT’S life. Don’t spend all your time accumulating junk for someone to go through. But it’s no use spending all your time doing things for people, either. They’re vicious sons of bitches, and no matter how much you give they’ll turn around and bite you HARD. No, the only person who’ll ever appreciate your gentleness and generosity is your own self. If you adopt an animal, they’ll at least be loyal, and many of us settle for that, albeit somewhat different, love. Intelligence isn’t good for much; if you’re smart, you realize all of this, realize the hopelessness of trying to figure things out or trying to do good in this life, try to help people but with the knowledge that they won’t appreciate it, and that’s not a good thing to know. If you want to do something nice for someone, do it! But don’t expect anyone to appreciate – or reward – your sacrifice. Ask any parent who’s lovingly surrounded a child with nurture and care and every material comfort only to have them spew such bitterness and hatred back that they wish they’d never even been born, much less had children. No one is ever going to thank you one-hundredth part of what you deserve, so if you do good, do it for its own sake, then walk away and never, ever look back.

I don’t accumulate much in the way of material possessions, but I often pity the person or program who’s one day going to have to go through all the bits of crap I’ve collected online and delete it all. Even worse is the thought that it won’t get deleted, but float around out there for eternity, without the context (which is me) attached! Aren’t we, in this sense, already immortal? The things I’ve collected, information, hacks, photos, things which make me FEEL, things I've written, photos I've taken, aren’t they some part of my mind? And won’t they exist out there in the electronic dimension pretty much forever? I can’t figure out whether that’s comforting or frightening! If you come upon a meaningful post which seems very timely and relevant to your own life, and it turns out it was posted by someone who’s dead now, aren’t you hearing their ghost? Discuss.