Video : Cao Cao last moments and death
From Three Kingdoms (2010) series
What I will write here might be depressing to some. So if you want to feel haha delighted and happy, I suggest you might skip this.
I'll be talking about death. With relation to the video above which I clipped from the series Three Kingdom released in 2010.
I find the video melancholic yet related to me in some sense.
Before that, I would like to say that, what I write here is not out of depression or something. It's more of a melancholic way of realising how ephemeral life is, while experiencing weakness and pain in the body of some sort.
First, after the discharge from hospital and my current recovering period, I had some sense...how to describe it...since I'm now 35 years old, I've reached the stage that actually I'm old enough to die.
I lived old enough to experience most things in life as what average people experience, and I should be thankful for that.
And if, just if, I die now, people around me will be shocked, but they couldn't say that I too young to die or so.
Second, that I'm 35 nearing 40 years age....
For those there who ain't Muslim, and I'm not preaching by the way, there's a verse that I think (I might be wrong) describe what I felt. Even though I'm not 40 yet.
And We have enjoined upon man, to his parents, good treatment. His mother carried him with hardship and gave birth to him with hardship, and his gestation and weaning [period] is thirty months. [He grows] until, when he reaches maturity and reaches [the age of] forty years, he says, "My Lord, enable me to be grateful for Your favor which You have bestowed upon me and upon my parents and to work righteousness of which You will approve and make righteous for me my offspring. Indeed, I have repented to You, and indeed, I am of the Muslims." - Al Ahqaf Verse 15
For me, as I think, there's an acceptance there that one realise one might die anytime, and so prayed more for repent, and to be grateful for the favor of life and other things that comes with life.
Third,
And so after discharge from the hospital, I didn't post anything in Facebook, whether a post or a comment.
I just read and read other's entry. and at one point I realised,
If I had really died, the world around, especially the people around me, will somehow moves on. Without me.
It's a bit sad, but then after some time, I kinda accepted it. We are all replacable, no matter what. We are that special yet that insignificant.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not advertising suicides or The 13 Reason Why or so, I think the idea of killing yourself is shitty. Life is mega even when it hurts.
It just so that no matter how big you are, no matter how special you are, no matter how you want the world to adore you...one day you'll die and some time then you'll be forgotten.
If you seek attention, wanting adoration, then stop. Because people, no matter how much they matter to you, they will move on. It's part of life.
In a way, realising this, somehow makes me feel, it's better to be detached with the world sometimes.
You will, one day.
And last,
Did you guys ever own an external hard disk?
You'll fill your hard disk with materials which are meaningful to you (porn? haha)....anyhow you know what I mean.
Then out of a sudden, the hard disk falls, or crashes, and all that data that you saved, are just lost and you can't recover it anymore....
I think that's how you feel at the moment of death, except, the intense feeling being magnified million times more.
It just happens, and you can't escape it. Whether you accept it or not, the moment has come for you to stop existing in this ephemeral world.
Being Islamic, I believe in life after death, and the feeling of being sinful at the moment of death is pretty scary. But hope and fear is what drives the prayers, just like what Imam Ghazali mentioned in his book Ihya' Ulumiddin.
Anyhow I hope you guys could read this as casual as I wrote it. I don't know why it felt casual, maybe it's the peace that comes from the acceptance...I don't know, maybe it's just an illusion.
Peace.
Peace.
I take the below excerpt from the blog Sheikhy Notes.
Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi (May Allah have mercy upon him) said,
"If you look deeply into worldly matters
you will become melancholy and will end up reflecting upon the
ephemeral nature of everything here below,
and the fact that truth lies
only in striving for the hereafter, since
every ambition to which you might cling will end in tears;
either the
goal is snatched from you, or you have to give the attempt up before you
reach it.
One of these two endings is inevitable except the search for
God the Almighty the Powerful.
Then the result is always joy, both immediate and eternal.
The immediate
joy is because you stop worrying about things which usually worry
people; this leads to an increase in the respect paid to you by friends
and enemies alike.
The eternal joy is the joy of paradise."
In Pursuit of Virtue by Ibn Hazm p.121