I have gotten into the habit of tweeting “Reminder: You will die” at least once every few weeks. Some people think it is funny. Some others think it is morbid. To me, death is a great motivating force. I wrote about it in my old blog once. Here’s that post once more.

There is this thing we all know. It might just be the only thing we are all certain about. We think, we hope and we plan to the best of our capacity. And yet, nearly all of it is rooted in chance. The only thing that will happen for sure is that we will all die.

Is that why we don’t talk about it? Because we are sure it will come? The way I see it, it appears more a case of denial. We refuse to talk about it, we fear signs of ageing, we even presume we are safe and secure in our environments! We refuse to consider the possibility that we might just drop off the edge of a cliff one day — tomorrow maybe — and never return.

Death therefore, becomes this dark inevitability — the end of everything good and worthwhile. Fear is the only emotion that comes to be associated with it.

A few years ago, I saw my grandmother die scared. Her last years were spent in anger and worry. She fretting over her medicines, pitied herself. She passed away with her eyes wide open, staring into the world she so desperately wanted to hold on to.

Her death wasn’t untimely. She had had a long and eventful life. Her youngest grandchild, that is me, was in college when her final illness started. Yet, there was no peace. Whether we look away from it, or thrash about frantically when it is at the door, our fear of dying is unreasonable.

We believe that our lives will follow a template. There is the modest beginning (birth, education, growing up), a significant middle (professional life, making money, gathering possessions, finding a partner, having children and raising them) and the inevitable end (old age and death).

Growing old and dying is a lucrative proposition indeed. But expecting it to actually happen is like betting. Living the template above also involves living in denial of the truth that is death for a major chunk of one’s life.

The problem with the template is that it prompts you to postpone things you love to a fabled ‘content’ part of your life. ‘I have always wanted to paint. I will take it up when I have made enough money,’ or ‘I will write my novel when I have settled down in life.’ When do we settle down? When do we ever call ourselves content? When do we stop preparing to live our lives and start living it? We sure as hell don’t have forever, and we know it. The idea is simply unaffordable.

It is a small wonder then, that after a lifetime spent just ‘surviving’, we can greet death with little more than fear. A good life is much more than just surviving.

A couple of months ago, when I decided to quit my job to write my book, friends and family asked me if I wasn’t scared about my future. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I was shit-scared. Scared that I would die without even having started on my first book (and I intend to write quite a few).

My attitude may appear pessimistic or paranoid to you. I see it as quite the opposite. I see death and am aware of it. It is around. It will take me when it feels like it. There will be no warning. But that is not what I am afraid of. What strikes fear into my heart is the possibility that I will lose sight of death and I will wander aimlessly and while away my time. Then one day death will come around and it will be my time to go. I don’t want to go without having told a single good story. Maybe I will go with death kicking and screaming, begging him/her to let me tell at least one more story. Even so, at least I would have tried.

The idea is not to be afraid of death, because honestly, it wouldn’t help. We ought to treat death as a reality — unpredictable and inevitable. That would let us cherish the years, months, days and moments before it even more. Life is for living, and death is truth.

How did you learn your first language?

I bet there were no grammar books involved. You weren’t subjected to critical studies and there were no tests to ascertain your level of intimacy with your mother tongue.

You learnt by immersion. You heard things, repeated them as best as you could (while people around you laughed at you), and eventually got the hang of it. You will agree with me when I say that the method is efficient. I am sure you speak your native language far more effortlessly and expertly than you speak languages you took classes for.

The first time I saw a computer was in my uncle’s office. I wanted to know more, so I started frequenting a cybercafe in front of my college where I had to pay them by the hour. I was fascinated. I told as many of my friends about ‘this Internet thing‘ as I could. I wanted everyone online. Some listened, most didn’t. They couldn’t imagine how computers might change things. They admitted the experience was fancy though.

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Not to get too philosophical about it, but I think the question is flawed. I will start by making clear that the emphasis of my answer is on the ‘A’ in the title.

What does ‘One’ mean exactly? Does it point to an individual? I don’t think so. Numbers (like God) aren’t tangible. They are concepts. They make it easy to grasp reality. They have no independent ‘existence’ of their own.

Even what we call an individual isn’t really one. A person is made of cells and cells are made of molecules. It is energy that holds it all together. But this doesn’t make you or me any less tangible than we are. It is just that we have both agreed to perceive each other as individuals.

Look at the world around you. How you define it depends entirely on you. You can see it as ‘one world’ if you want to, or you can choose to see it as a bunch of disparate entities. It can appear as one family to you, or a collection of hostile nations at odds with each other. You may want to see the world as home to billions of individuals. You could even choose to see it as an enormous cloud of energy holding together a whole lot of particles, giving them the semblance of our physical world.

The point I am trying to make is that the world, or reality, isn’t objective. It is an interpretation. Each one of us lives in his own world. The nature of each of our worlds depends on our own respective natures.

So the existence of God, quite like the existence of peace or harmony or hatred or violence, depends on you. If you do not believe in the existence of God, it is not because of lack of proof. It is because you don’t want to.

When you tell someone the truth, you pay him respect.

You let him know that you consider him mature enough to handle the truth. You tell him that he is someone you feel comfortable being honest with. You place your trust in him.

It might appear sometimes that the only way out of an uncomfortable situation is a lie. But to lie to someone in order to not hurt them is, at the end of the day, a show of disrespect.