Life according to Mark

Mark, a philosophy student from Zurrieq, blogs at Me, Myself and Mark. This weekend, he was in philosophical mood discussing life:

As we grow and mature, so does our thought and instinct. What is 'Life' to a child? What is 'Life' to a teenager? And what is 'Life' to a person on his or her deathbed? Perhaps, to a child, life is something that comes out of nothing; divine intervention, perhaps. "Life is love," a child would say, inspired by countless Disney animated features. A teenager is usually the person who's tired of Life; simply because Life is, for the teenager, a routine. It is merely up till that point in time a climax of studies, where each step forward looks to be harder than before. For the teenager, life starts with pleasure, and perhaps as teenagers, we have a very slight misconception of death...

Through movies, dramas, radioplays and books, we are presented with a spectrum of life and death, which usually bring out the following points:- Life sucks; death is seen as the ultimate release;- Tragic death; everyone mourns and loves the dead person;- Die to protect; the ultimate way of life. I could, of course, keep on going with the above, but the main points are the above three. And those three are usually constantly repeated - we are constantly exposed to the theme of self-sacrifice in movies (Titanic or Pearl Harbour would be major influences, but they are also accompanied by movies like Constantine).

"For you to live, I must die." How many times have we heard that?! This is absurd. Through such things, we believe, whatever our age, nationality, culture and so forth, that self-sacrifice is the way. At least for some minutes following the movie. Then, the 'depression' of life falls back upon us, cloaking us with its dark gown and forcing us to, once again, abandon fiction and move across a well-lit path known as 'reality'. And what are we trying to do? Break out from the path, or ignore our fantasies and dreams? I wonder...