No One Lives For Free – Life and Free will

By SpectralKid

By: SpectralKid
No one lives for free – it’s a quote I’ve learned to cherish in reading Neil Gaiman’s “Death: The High Cost of Living”, the namesake of this little slice of webspace I’m writing it.

How often do we think that life is boring and uneventful — like the excitement has been sapped from it once we figured out that the world was round, that there were seven continents and being told where babies come from.  I’ve had those days and I’m sure you’ve had them too and if you’re anything like me, your mind wonders for a while about how it would feel to just take a step back and take a breather to figure out the whole cogwork of the universe.

The irony however, is that you can’t. The only breather you’ll be able to take is the one that awaits at the end of the tunnel – in death.

Death puts everything into perspective. As morbid as people might accuse my fascination and appreciation of it, it’s something I’ve learned to be very conscious of and thus has given me a fonder appreciation for life. Honestly, I can’t imagine a life without an end because what’s the point then?

We can keep living without consequence or always live in fear of getting hurt if life didn’t have its deadline and what kind of life would that be? The reality of death thrusts upon us the beauty of living – the fact that the life given to you is a miracle in itself is a testament to that fact. Have you ever thought about that? The fact that you were created out of the infinite possibilities of your two parents meeting and their parents meeting (so on and so forth) up to the precise moment when out of an infinite number of possibilities that you, would come into existence is a miracle that we often neglect to appreciate.

It is this reason that Neil Gaiman’s portrayal of Death isn’t the grim, dark hooded figure popular media shows him to be but instead, Death takes the form of a beautiful girl who just takes everything as it is – better or worse. She loves and accepts everyone from all walks of life which in turn puts our lives back into our hands – Death is just there waiting for us in the end, how we get there is our choice to make.

A perplexing idea comes then in the idea of free will. Life by itself can be thrown away in indulgences or be lived with a reckless abandon thinking that “we’re all gonna die anyway” but I adhere to the contrary; that life can be made into something of meaning. Free will allows us to do that and whether it be God or some other cosmic anomaly, we are given that privilege to not be slaves to our urges.

Free will allows us to leave something behind in the world despite our deadlines and to make our life matter to the people who will succeed us. Conscious of that fact, we also have an obligation. Since we are the one in a million possibilities to be given life, responsibility is thrust upon us to make something of it because to throw away our right to live is to spit in the face of all those other possibilities that could have taken your life’s stead.

You do not live for free, nobody does – we’re all accountable to something because we are given that chance to “Be”. Seeing our life as boring and using that as an excuse to off ourselves then becomes such a redundant argument.

The universe may always remain a mystery to us and our life’s existence may be constituted of completely random consequences but in the course of things, we just have to take those consequences and shape them into something truly ours just so that at the end of the tunnel we can present it to Death with a sheepish smile, embarrassed and a bit unsure, that says “well, this is all I’ve made of myself.”

And you know what? She’d just smile back and give you a kiss on a cheek because that’s who she is. She’s there for everyone; what you give to her isn’t going to matter as much as what you think about it, whether or not you can kick the bucket being content with what your life has amounted to. No one lives for free and what you pay for a life is the High Cost of Living.
Sandman and Death

A Matter of Perspective

By SpectralKid

By: Spectralkid


The world, if taken into perspective, is still filled with the same sort of crap it’d have to put up with five years ago. People are suffering, people not caring, people inflicting pain, people just not giving a damn – the world still suffers from the same sort of neo-modernist thought that puts the human being on the pedestal… or crushed under it. Letting all these come into your realization will either drive you mad or sap you of all hope for tomorrow – believe me, I know.
Suffice to say then, that outlook hasn’t changed. Here are some of my points:

- The way the world works fails simply because of the fact that there are just more people who need saving than people who do the saving.
- One man can’t change the world – learn to live with it, you can’t save everyone.
- For every one person who makes something of himself, there’d still be a queue of hundreds on the other side of the fence waiting for their turn.
- Sure, there are successes but in the greater scheme of things, I doubt any one person’s success would justify every other problem in the world.
- And if we got something really going well, there’s always gonna be something to mess it up. It will never end because that’s human nature – we’re always bound to mess up a sweet deal  –  Just take a look at Genesis.

Life then ends up being an endless struggle of looking on the bright side, if you ask me. There are just too many wrongs to right that it will take centuries before we can actually get it right. We’d sooner just throw up our hands and be rid of it, let the world run to ruin because there isn’t anything worth living for. You’re going to die after a while anyways so no one would really get to see the ending of all the things you have to put up with. Our existence is just us, center stage, struggling to find meaning in the dark until it drives us insane… or we actually find it and that’s exactly what makes it all worthwhile.
For all the crap we have to put up with in the world, there’s still that persistence to clean it up and that’s exactly why there’s still a tomorrow to look forward to. It’s all a matter of perspective. Take my points for example:

- The way the world works wins because there are still the presence of people who are willing to save amongst the multitudes who needs saving.
- One man can’t change the world – learn to live with it, but you can change one person at a time.
- For everyone one person who makes something of himself, he brings hope for the hundreds on the other side of the fence waiting for their turn.
- There are successes and that proves that you can make something of yourself in the greater scheme of things.
- And even if we mess up a sweet deal, it’s not the end of the world. In fact, it just means it’s time for a new beginning — Just take a look at Genesis.

You can stand in the light and look into the dark, pitying the ones crying in the darkness – or – step into the dark side, amongst the sinners, the suffering, the madmen and find that light at the end of the tunnel, to give you hope, to give you something to look forward to, to give you something to live for. We’re all just witnesses, placed between the spectrum but no matter how you look at it, the world will still have its shortcoming as well as its appeal. It’s all just a matter of perspective.