Prelude to Death

Graduation. A grand ceremony to welcome you into a much bigger world. While there, you hear meticulously prepared speeches, a glorious hymn that’s repeated over and over again, and words like: “Good Luck!” and “Congratulations!” to last you a lifetime. Of course there are also the things that are left unsaid; smiles you receive from the person standing next to you, ones that you could almost feel the anxiety—albeit fear—that both of you share underneath those glimmering teeth and curved lips. Jeering, shouts of joy, which do mark a satisfying end. But you’re well aware that its just for that day. The next time you’ll be celebrating like that, it’s doubtful you’ll have enough strength left in you to shout and clap your hands when you’re gasping for your final breath. Our parents—in most cases—feel a surge of pride, as if they were actually marching with you on stage, as you shake hands with, not a teacher, but a pedagogue. For they too feel a sense of accomplishment.

I’ve never heard of a graduation ceremony where the people didn’t speak about life. The one I just came from stressed the importance of choices. I thought it was nice when one of them said: “when you say yes to one choice you shut your doors to a thousand other possibilities.” It’s a little comforting to know that other people know what you feel, and that they can say with nicer words than you can come up with. Though it’s the thought of being comforted which bothers me the most. For one thing, comforting stands for merely alleviating a sense of pain. A temporary shroud. No wonder they made us wear black togas that covered almost our entire bodies. I watched my peers make their way up the stage—some go up more than others, but its all the same thing—and see scholars, with their specialized togas smile and applaud. Then I asked: “What the hell are we doing?” I’ve grown accustomed to human nature, and our endeavors to reduce the world around us so that we can understand. The way science progresses to make laws, statistics to generalize, religion to give hope, and—like what I’m doing now—trying to pin my abstract thoughts into words that you, me, we can make sense of. It comforts us to be able to do these things. It brings a sense of lordship over all the space around us, which otherwise makes us feel ever the more miniscule. In the end I could only realize that all that preparation, dressing up, and participation in that solemn ceremony (graduation) ultimately works in the same way. They make us feel special, like the entire day was made for none other than us. The world should come to a halt and let us shine. But if we take a peek from what’s outside that black shroud of comfort, we can see that ceremony for what it really is. A resistance from insignificance. That day was really when we are most vulnerable from fear and the “real reality.” Its official, our whole lives were finally laid before us, and seeing that it would pain us to know the truth, then it was more than needed to tell us that: yes, you all are important; yes, you do make a difference in this world.

The only drawback would be at the times when they fumble, and thus fail to bring us the illusion. There were more than eight hundred students whose names had to be called, so we couldn’t take our time to relish more than fifteen seconds of fame. Ours was the 149^th time they held the same ceremony, it said so in the program. And out of all the graduations held year by year by different schools, wasn’t there one student who excelled above the rest? Wasn’t there at least one whose name was mispronounced? All they had to do was follow a form of ceremony, and in no time it becomes stripped of it’s originality and becomes part of the grandest cycle that we all belong in, which we can never fully comprehend. I wish I can say that we are like ants, but I don’t think we’re as fortunate. At least for the ants, we know, for our own sake, that there exists beings that are far more important and bigger than they are. While we are left to hope for ourselves.

So graduation, one can see it as a prelude to death. It can make us see what role we can never play in the scheme of all things, no matter how hard we try to comfort ourselves with knowledge and wisdom. Death would only be a repeat of it all. It can be the same with all forms of celebration, be it birthdays, anniversaries or weddings and so on. All we have to do is add up what makes it special for us and subtract it from what makes it like the rest of the world, we’ll still come up with the same results.