Somewhere, you’re buried six feet under in a wooden coffin of Emotion and Self-Deprivation. The soil is thick of worms and gravity. The weight of the world is compressing on you from all sides, and you’re the one holding the shovel. You’re the one digging your hole, making it deep, making it the perfect rectangle you always imagined it would be. And for what?
So someone can read that clever line you picked out for your own tombstone. You’re so smart.
You don’t get it. Yet.
Now, the message you wish to share with generations to come is forever etched into that granite. Innocent onlookers will get to read your wit for years to come. Your body will eventually decompose, and you’ll be nothing more than dust in a box, but that intelligent line you thought up for years will never be lost.
Sure, the memories of you will eventually fade with the memories of the minds you shared while still alive, your time will pass. But that one line won’t.
Even when careless teenagers step over your grassy heaven on some Halloween night, searching for fright and sex, even when the lot next to yours is finally being filled and all attention is wavered to that red carpet that surrounds the brown box, you’ll still be there. In some way or another. Motionless. Timeless. Dead, physically.
That line is your Masterpiece, your Moonlight Sonata, your Raven, your Nevermind. It’ll withstand the storms of time. But for most of us, this Masterpiece eludes us like ideas of musical notes in the wind, always present, and always just out of reach. Only the truly wise can realize their Masterpiece. But most of us are fools.
Fools of a feather.
But that doesn’t stop the hungry from striving. It’s out there. It’s visible. We can almost hear the faint notes of our ideas as melodies. A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere. We’re piecing them together. Forming our chorus. Forming our bridge. Like a puzzle that takes a lifetime, you’re just trying, always trying to find the match. And then another, and another.
That line, oh that clever little line in the granite. Six feet above your forehead. Your final Masterpiece.
But this eludes you.
And without that line, no grave is ready to be dug. No shovel is needed, despite your best efforts. That coffin can only close when you’ve created a line so original, so witty, and so heavy that it withstands the storms of time. You get it.
Now hold on.
With a coffin seven-feet long in a grave six feet deep under a granite stone with a line so clever that it stands the sands of time, you’re living forever.
But do you really want to live forever?
The energy required to survive and endless existence is enormous. Like a treadmill that never stops, a memory that never fades gets old. Too much of anything is exhausting, like pop radio, or Sarah Palin. Imagine a day without the night, or a night without the day? An endless Ground Hog Day, or an endless moment that never moves on. Never shifts. Never un-focuses. Living forever would be a one-chord song where the beat never changes, or a one-word story that spans millions of pages. Over and over.
All work and no play may make Jake a dull boy. But what about all play and no work? Such an uneven keel would cause the universe to fold in on itself. All Life, or All Death could cause a rip in the space time continuum. And you don’t want to mess with Marty McFlys 1985.
Maybe, just maybe, that grave needs to hold your body down. Six feet under with dirt and worms above, maybe, just maybe, that clever line you’re already thinking about needs to elude you. Notes in the wind.
Finishing your Masterpiece may not be a good thing.
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