Driving home last night after the concert, Smallsteps noticed a shop called "Hautaustoimisto" which is a Funeral Home, but the direct translation from Finnish would be Burial Office. And since the name didn't mean much to her, Smallsteps asked what it was. And well, her father being a bit of a clown told her it was because in Finland so many people visit the cemeteries that the dead people need assistants to schedule bookings.
She only bought it for a fraction of a second until logic stepped in.
But my wife explained what they do and how they organise grave stones and caskets and the like and this led to a fun tidbit of information for Smallsteps from my wife about my own burial, which is a little less traditional. She told our daughter that I want to be thrown into the forest so the animals can eat me. But this is not entirely true, because I want a bit of ceremony. The process of throwing has to have one person grabbing my hands, the other my feet and then swinging me, "1, 2 and 3", and leaving me as I lay.
I have been told this is probably illegal.
So last night I came up with another idea, just in case I am forced into a normal kind of deal. If I can't be thrown into the forest, I want to be buried in a large, clear, zip-lock bag, like used for storing leftover food. Perhaps even with a message for attendees written on the note-taking surface. Smallsteps was asking more about this today and I said that I would of course also be naked and she said, "Why ever would you want that?" And of course the answer was simple, because I will be dead, but they will have to be there with the guests.
Dark humour is still humour.
Death doesn't scare me and I think that I might think differently to most people about it, because I don't believe that we must survive for some reason. From where I started far in the distance, I have come to the conclusion over the years that we aren't made to struggle endlessly. Yeah, life can be hard and I am not saying we should give up at the slightest hurdle, but I don't begrudge those who get to a point and say, "I am not getting enough out of life, nor am I able to put enough value in, to make the struggle worth it".
That second bit is key.
Getting out of life is selfish, so is wanting to put in value, but it is at least helping others too. I don't get the point of merely surviving this life and I don't get the personal value of those who are doing all they can just to stay alive, with no real chance of ever getting out of that cycle. It seems like a cruel and unusual punishment, a glass ceiling on wellbeing, with a person continually smashing against it, but it isn't going to break. More likely though, it is like trained fleas instead, where the ceiling is the lid of the jar and after bumping the head a few times, the lid can come off and the flea will never jump out of the jar again.
Have we been trained to survive?
Of course, we have a survival mechanism, but I get the sense that this natural trigger has been leveraged to make some people wealthier, because we will keep on trying to survive even though we are made to do so with less and less. Eventually, just getting up in the morning is a burden, and as we can see with so many depressed people, it is getting quite heavy for many to keep lifting, without that sense of progression. And while many people are depressed over what is pretty meaningless, I think that is another part of the problem.
Survival isn't a purpose to live.
It isn't enough for a human to have survival alone. But for a lot of people today and to some degree myself too, life purpose is no longer part of daily life when it comes to adding value to society. Yes, there can be the meaning of providing for family, but even that many people are choosing to opt out of. But beyond that, we as a species tend to need to be part of something larger than ourselves, something that adds value to the future environment of our children also, not just to get them through childhood.
But that future is looking worse.
Most jobs do not add value to this world. You can argue that yours is amazing because you help sick people, but most of the illnesses are caused by the environment we have created, making it a problem we needn't have, but do. So many of the jobs we have a re similar, where the entire supply chain is ultimately doing nothing good for society, even if it is turning a massive profit. Profit doesn't provide purpose, though many rich people will argue that - until the bombs drop and we are living and dying in a post-apocalyptic world.
All the money in the world, forced to live in a bunker.
Sometimes I think how great the world would be if it wasn't filled with so many people believing profit was the answer, even if it comes from what is useless business activity that we should have surpassed long ago. Sure, that is a fantasy land, but the vast majority of problems facing society today would just disappear. We'd have new problems of course and plenty of old ones to still solve, but solving meaningful problems gives purpose. And when the entire supply chain is in service to solving meaningful problems, there is no busywork, just important work to be done.
And play of course.
But play wouldn't be done to escape the drudgery of meaningless work, it would be done because the brain and body needs it to some degree to function well. It would be true self-care at a societal level, so that people are able to be their best when tackling the real problems we face.
But what do I know.
My problem is finding a large enough zip-lock bag.
Taraz
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