The struggle against mortality

The following piece of writing is for Lily Phyu 

It was somewhere in a national park where Nick asked me this question he had been asking everyone. “Why do our generation take lots of photos?”

The obvious reason is we have the technology available to do so. There had not been any time in the history when it is very convenient to record everything you see or experience at the tip of your finger – all of mobile phones, cameras, MP 4 players and tablets allows the people to absorb every moment that life offers them. 

But I enjoyed digging a little bit and answered that the urge to share (or brag?) might be one reason for young people to take photos. Thanks to the social media, you can post photos and videos which will appear on the newsfeed of your friends and acquaintances who hit the like button. Such facility is never found in our real life. But Nick’s answer to his own question is more interesting. We are actually fighting against the morality of our own.

We do not want the happy moments we are having at those special times to vanish away, which will vanish for sure and for ever. The confidence that they can conquer the greatest enemies of their life (natural disasters, wild animals and the evil to name a few) has been greatly diminished in the rampant erosion of time. Knowing that they cannot savor the moments, the human beings were misled to the path to record them. Photos, videos and written lines can give us the moment of reunion with the past. But it cannot record all of your senses in a given amount of time. All the living conditions including sight, smell and sounds of the experience when you are sitting in the woods, for instance, cannot be transferred electronically to the devices. 

To put it in a rather human way, seeing how she can manage to smile soon after she pursed her lips is a moment of freedom no electronic device can reproduce at a later time. In fact, today technology helps us to record the material descriptions of a person or a place in countless ways in the guise of genuine experience and feeling, and unconsciously it hurts us even more. 

How does it hurt us? The clear explanation would be that it is not real however it is intended to be. Mulling over the complete digital collection of your trips or somebody you have known would certainly bring some memories which only dwell at your own imagination. Rather than the remedy for our struggle against the mortality, the digital technology creates a massive personalized illusion which have time and space wrapped inside. By browsing through the photos and videos of a particular time, a person can have a brief moment of relationship with the past. The problem, however, is that the illusion is not meant to last for eternity. It is good as long as the reality does not intrude into your life. Because there is no such place in the world where the reality cannot interfere with your own living, the problem of mortality still remains.  

As the technology which is generally regarded as the best human can ever attain cannot help us in our struggle against mortality, how do we survive in our daily life? To put it bluntly, how do (or should) we stay happy in our quotidian existence in compliance with the mortality which will be chasing after us for the rest of our life? I must say that this problem has remained unresolved to me until recently. While I cannot guarantee it is the most reasonable answer, the best solution to tackle this problem for me is ‘not trying to deal with it’. Just focusing on the moments of present will be less appealing when the memories constitute the better part of you. But we should not forget the easiest way to live in the nature is the most natural way. Neither the past nor the future is not natural as they are not real. Dwelling on the present – not the sweet comforting past or uncertain future – provides us an opportunity to stay in touch with the nature. I believe that when we allow the nature to be a part of our life, we will find our own way to happiness through it although time may vary from person to person. After all, the only way to attack the unbeaten enemy is to show that it still doesn’t beat you.

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