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The Dark Spectre of my Mortality
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I quit smoking cigarettes and cut down on my drinking over the last few years. I have since last year adopted a rather rigorous exercise routine.
I don't read the newspapers anymore. Whenever I get a radio, a TV, or even a phone I have to give it away or throw it away after a few weeks, sometimes after a few days.
All I have in my apartment is books, New Yorker magazines, and my sullen offline computer.
I have been putting more effort into keeping everything clean and orderly. Anything I don't need, I no longer have.
All of the philosophical questions I once had I have answered.
All my writing projects except for one, a scientific one, are little more than me entertaining myself with the mass of images I've accumulated in my unconscious during the short time I've been on this planet. My memories are like toys that the child that is my imagination plays with.
If my work never blossoms into a career, it will not be a loss at all.
My inevitable mortality looms like a dark spectre. But I refuse to make it my enemy, as so many others do. I prefer to see my life as a wonderful gift, something that never needed to be, but happened anyway, against unimaginable odds.
There is something objective about the preciousness of life. It isn't precious because our fear of death makes it that way. It's sheer value is written into our genes.
It's what makes the species of primates who are lords over the Earth adopt a fighting spirit in everything they do that is worthwhile.
If we are fighters, we should fight for things, not against things. We should take command of our little ship, instead of spending all our energy just keeping it afloat, while drifting aimlessly and being blown about.
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