We die Twice

We die Twice

We die twice:

Once, when the breathe leaves our body (in fact interestingly it is said, the last thing before death is when the sound dies from our ears) and we die once more, when the last person who knows our name dies too.  Few of us will have the fortune to embed our name over centuries, unlike Socrates or a Jesus. Even most loved celebrities live in our hearts for a while, but soon get forgotten: a cohort that would soon pass on and then to oblivion would remember Marilyn Munroe.  

Elton John, says Goodbye to England’s Rose, Lady Diana:

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never fading with the sunset
When the rain set in
And your footsteps will always fall here

Along England's greenest hills
Your candles burned out long before
Your legend ever will

Your footsteps will always fall here
Along England's greenest hills
Your candle burned out long before your legend ever will. 

To me a life well lived is one which held:

• ·      A personal purpose to one’s life that had the opportunity to potentialise at work or within society, and contributed to adding good.
• ·      Someone whom by luck, you found loved you and you loved back
• ·      A meaningful job that allowed you an opportunity to earn your livlihood and provide for those you loved: your family.
• ·      A faith, that offered a high purpose to life.

Our moment on this earth is shortlived. If we viewed everything we do from the realisation that there is no beginning, no end: then all acts would fall into perspective.

In the end what is left of us is a tombstone, a marked grave, to whom friends, relatives and kith return, till memory holds true. Then with passage of time, no one reurns, and the inscription merely records our name: date born, date died.

To dust thou art, and to dust thou shall return, says the bible.