My aunt died yesterday. Or maybe last week, I don’t know. I guess it all depends on when this piece is published. It is actually my grandaunt, too, but that matters little.
In any case, I had planned for quite a while to go to the beach on the day that incidentally fell on the morrow of her death. You see, I have had quite a busy summer thus far, and little time to enjoy it, much less to enjoy this suffocating heatwave that we have been blessed with.
News of her death came late in the evening, and it obviously put a damper on my plans which were now put in question. I wasn’t so sure that a day at the beach was appropriate.
Next morning, I woke up full of life.
Now I do not mean that in some happy, joyous way. Nor do I mean that I was soaked in some vigour apart from the sweat that so easily builds up following the least vigorous effort during our hot summers. Though I did find myself possessed by some sort of unexplained and otherworldly energy, it was more like a feverish will to live. A fervent fever of lively fervour.
I felt alive, in other words.
The relationship with death has always fascinated mankind, and I too had been afflicted by a morbid curiosity in my younger years. I still recall passing days fixated on the skeletal figures marking the tombs of those privileged enough to find a home-in-death at St John’s Co-Cathedral.
The memento mori has served as a constant reminder of the shortness of life, which, as Seneca teaches us, is only short if we pursue meaningless activities.
Anyway, what I really want to talk about is not the merits of old wisdom, but rather the elusive world of coincidence. You see, I decided to go to the beach after all, and on my way out I picked an old USB pen drive that was lying on my desk, and which I had last used about a decade ago. I decided to try my luck and see, or rather hear, if there were any songs on it that I could listen to on my car stereo.
I slid the drive inside the head unit and I was immediately regaled with Sweet Child of Mine. This brought back a lot of memories, nostalgia of my well- or ill-spent youth, depending on how one looks at it; my “will” spent days, let’s say. The second track was Love is Only a Feeling, which is always apt.
Perhaps there is some hidden significance behind the seemingly random events that affect or afflict us
In any case, it is the third track, the one that crept on me sneakily and caught me unawares, that I want to talk to you about. For you see, the sound went from melodic and harmonious tunes to a very sober and authoritative voice: “Alright, so this is Philosophy 176, class is on Death.”
I quickly pressed the rewind button to go back to the sweet music of mine.
Yet I could not shake off how uncanny the whole situation was. How could it be that after such a long time of absence, I had decided, on that very day, to make use of this device, and precisely to have a listen to its audio content?
The world of coincidences is just as fascinating as, if not more than the world of the dead. For whereas the latter has the immortal mystique, the former is something we actually experience in our life, and some of us almost daily.
I talked a lot about this subject with some friends of mine, especially with another author, Trevor (yes, that Trevor). He too had his share of impossible coincidences, and we both agreed that this was a powerful ally to imagination.
Coincidences abound. As, for instance, during the series of power cuts, by which we thankfully were only affected once: incidentally, on the day I decided to fix an old but trusty torchlight. That very night, I had decided to finally have a look at it, and an hour later the power went out, meaning that I was lucky enough to test my work.
Anyhow, you get the point. I would need the whole newspaper to write about half the incredible coincidences I experienced in my life, which, to be honest, would save readers from the drudgery of predictable political news.
Some would say there is meaning behind these coincidences. Possibly. Perhaps there is some hidden significance behind the seemingly random events that affect or afflict us, but certainly, even if there isn’t, we tend to find some in our eager search for sense beyond the sensuous. As I myself had found in the death of a relative, a reminder of our transient stay here and the natural call to make the most of it.
Yet I wonder what made me react so determinedly. Surely, as we grow older, we get accustomed to the thought of death, and while the mystery of death remains with us till the very end of life, our childlike fascination with it is left behind with childhood, which is ironically the time we think about it the least. I assume I will experience a renewed interest in the grim reaper once I feel its presence approaching, but till then I am left with this cadaverous resignation.
A resignation which, inexplicably, seems to fuel life. A state which triggers in me a sense of survival, and pushes me to fight viciously like a cornered animal.
What triggered it? Perhaps it was the fact that I am surrounded by decay, or seeing the death of my country, a slow, agonising death of all things I held dear. Perhaps my will to live is a mere desperate act of rebellion, a childish stomping of the feet at an indifferent progression that we commonly mistake for progress.
In any case, life goes on. Sometimes, it takes a death to recognise the force of such a truism.
Kenneth Charles CurmiKenneth Charles Curmi is the former national representative of the Parliament of Malta to the European Parliament and the EU institutions.