Death ... A Funny Thing!!

Death is a kind of funny thing. A person (or a creature) who till a moment back was a physical presence becomes a memory. Along with that all the memories, experiences and knowledge that formed a part of the living person ceases to exist. And that, perhaps, is the real loss, not just to those near and dear to the deceased, but, to the whole humanity.

During our lives we experience a lot of things - some funny, some sad, some pleasant and some poignant - all of which make up the sum total of our lives and we learn quite a lot from them. Some of these experiences and what we learnt from them can be shared with others through spoken or written words. But, quite a few of them are so personal that no amount of words or pictures can communicate these to another person. Perhaps if one is a musician in the class of Yehudi Menuhin, one could come up with a composition that could communicate the experience to another to some extent.

We also develop certain skills during the course of our lives. Though not conscious of them in our day to day life, when a need arises we may be able to use those skills to solve a problem or perform a task. Unless a situation arises where we are called upon to use this skill and there is a willing learner observing us, these skills never get transmitted and die with us.

Again, there are certain pieces of information or knowledge that have been passed on to us by our elders which form part of our personality or what is called traditional knowledge or wisdom. In the changed circumstances that we find ourselves in, we may never have the time or chance to impart this knowledge or information to the next generation and even if we try, they may not be receptive to it. These too cease to exist once we are no more.

In short, a person’s mind is a repository of a variety of knowledge, information and skills gathered from personal experiences or learned from others and most of them pass into oblivion when the person dies. Perhaps, it doesn't make a difference, perhaps it is better that they are lost, or... perhaps, it's an irreparable loss to the entire humanity. May be in the years to come we may develop a means to back up the information stored in a person’s mind on to some other media for later use; like the contents of computer’s Hard Disk are backed up on to a CD, VCD or some other storage device.