Our Feeble Humanity According to History.

Gilgamesh spent the last chapters of the epic fearing an end and pleading for eternity. In his search for immortality, he sought out Utnapishtim, the only man the gods have ever granted eternal life. However, Utnapishtam answered Gilgamesh with an ultimatum: “there is no permanence” (106).

Humans aren’t meant to live forever. We are all meant to meet our end someday no matter who we are; “what is there between the master and the servant when both have met their doom?” (107). Everything we have learnt, as a race, from science to history shows us that there is a cycle of growth and decay. A typical example is evolution; how many of such cycles do you believe our primitive ancestors have gone through to place human beings as the dominant animals? I can confidently say that even the human race, with all its glory, may one day bend over for a new dominant race just as the Neanderthals did for Homo sapiens.

Nothing is meant to last forever. If I learned one thing from my ninth grade World History class, it was just this. We started the year off with the clever Greeks. They saw some success in the fields of art, sciences and even war. Then they were conquered; that ended the era of Greece. Then we fast forwarded to the height of the Roman Empire. They were successful as well especially in the incorporation of Greek literature and Art. Alas they weren’t to last either. Europe fell to the rule of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. If we were to fast forward a little more, we will land in the wake of the Great British Empire. Where are they now? (It’s interesting how much a World History class focused on just one part of the whole).

If our great civilizations, the greatest inventions of humanity, can’t last an eternity then what can? Nothing… Even so, there is a way to still pass on a legacy.

Here is where my favorite quote takes part and it is ironically taken from Nickleback: “Each day’s a gift and not a given right”. Gilgamesh’s epic mirrors this quote a little bit as well when Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh that “Life and death do [the gods] allot but the day of death they do not disclose” (107). We human beings will never know the day of our death and that gets us thinking: “what if it’s tomorrow? What if that’s the day the god’s have set aside for our deaths?”

 Oh and if there is one thing I have learned from the Final Destination series it’s that death can be really persistent; No one can cheat death.

Therefore humans found a way to give meaning to life. One way is through friendship, love and family. The closeness of a bond can give us joy, melt away our loneliness and give us a reason to kick ourselves awake in the morning. If one person has given time to keep another man company then that man has reason to live and return the favor. No one wants to be lonely.

Religion, that has been passed down through the ages and permeated through the population of the Earth, is another way to explain live and give reason to it. For instance, according to my Catholic faith, one has to live and perform good deeds so our hearts are lighter than a feather; that way, we can pass God’s ultimate test and enter Heaven’s gates.

Finally there are our children, our legacy in genes. They are the ones who carry our names into the world (mostly our surnames). When we think about in terms of “legacy” then we realize that we can finally understand helicopter moms. I mean if we really want our children to represent us then shouldn’t we put our best foot forward?

Now back to religion; we humans are always looking for more than just a meaning in life. We are all looking to give our lives eternal meanings. In order to end this exhausting search in the dark, humans have created religion. We bury our dead; why is that? Isn’t it because to respect them by “immortalizing” their memory? We create meaning in our current lives to secure an eternity in heaven. It’s heaven in Catholicism, but it’s different in other religions. However, isn’t it fascinating that all major religions mention a life after death?

Think about the Greeks: they had the great kingdom of Hades. Think about the Egyptians: they built pyramids as gateways to the afterlife. Think about the Hindus: they believe in reincarnation.

We all aim to be famous in science, business, politics or art. It’s just one way we wish to maintain a legacy, a story just about us. After all we all know how feeble life can be. After all, according to the bible and now Utnapishtim, we have been killed off before by a giant flood and there’s no reason why it couldn’t happen again.