Immortality of a memory

There was a time when everything was a lot simpler. Someone else would make the decision for you. Someone else taught you what was right and what was wrong. Someone else took the blame for you. It could be your mom or dad. Or your teacher. Someone close- a friend perhaps. Living in this soft comfortable bubble, shielded from the outside world. Everything was well-taken care of.

We were taught to accept the system we live in. Study, work, raise a family and then die. Always abiding the system like a cycle and injected with ideologies and emotions from time to time. We were taught to have a sense of belonging and to adhere to certain customs and beliefs. And then, little by little we were given freedom. The freedom to think on our own two feet. It is now up to us to forge our own destinies and to make our contribution to history. Or is it?

History have taught me that life is cheap. It is expensive to the eyes of the people close to us and to you and me individually but in a larger scale, life is but a feeble little light. One day a person could mean the world to you and then the next, dead. You will live with the ghost of their memories and perhaps even think of the possible futures you could have with the person if he or she were still alive. No one else may care because the bonds you form with the person were special… almost sacred and exclusive to you. What would you do? It pains me to see someone losing someone close. The emptiness and dread. The confusion and grief. When a part of your story is ripped away, it leaves you in shock. And the reason is because your whole life, you were taught to immortalise the people close to you while the naked truth is, everyone dies. The special bond you have with the person is best remembered for its value in gratitude and forgotten when it keeps you from making the right decisions in life. 

Imagine you were Shah Jahan, having built the magnificent Taj Mahal in memory of your loved one. To build such a masterpiece, you could imagine the amount of affection and emotion he poured in. To honour the memories he had or could have had with his dear lover, you could imagine his anguish. He must have been distraught. I could only pity a man like him having to wake up seeing the beautiful mausoleum always remembering the ghost of his lover. Life is a feeble light. It is only us that immortalise them in our bubble.