More Ramblings, on Transience of People

So apparently reading about Kantian ethics triggers a philosophical mood in me, or whatever :)

Up until recently I hadn't really bothered myself with ontological questions, such as life and death, but as of late I have been thinking a lot about such things. This is tangentially related to the graduation issue, about which I wrote the previous post.

As I was trying to figure out how to cope with the separation from the people who currently are my closest friends, I was thinking like this - you are going to meet new people, and make new close friends, and you will still have the degree of closeness and intimacy that you usually need. The argument seemed solid, considering that I faced a similar situation when I left Bulgaria for the States, and eventually made close friendships in the new environment.

However, this, and some other issues, made me think that the connections we create with other people are very temporary, very ephemeral. For a person like myself, moving out of your comfort zone and starting a life somewhere else is not an uncommon routine, nor will it be any less common in the near future - I'm moving over to Seattle, but after the first few months I'm moving over to Vancouver, where I'm staying between 5 months and a year, and then back to Seattle. Eventually (?) I'm returning to Bulgaria. So how many times is the above cycle of making new friends is going to repeat itself? Is it even worth it becoming emotionally attached to people, if you are going to have to say good-bye not too long after you've met?

When I talk to others I usually say that there are different kinds of friends - broadly speaking, those whose friendship lasts long and all the rest. I also say that a person is really lucky if he has friends that he may not see for a really long time, but once they are together it is obvious that the friendly feelings haven't diminished, and things can be continued from where they stopped. I am blessed with such friendships both in Bulgaria and in the US, so by my own criteria, I'm really lucky.

But somehow that doesn't solve it for me. What about the time of separation? What about missing all those people you've become emotionally attached to? What if you know you won't be able to see each other for a really long period of time? How do you cross the line, on one side of which you are together and everything you have is tangible, visible, concrete, and on the other side of which there is separation? I mean, I know how, but I'm asking - how do you do it in your mind and your heart so that it doesn't feel like something is being torn away from you?

To make things worse (or better?), I started thinking about mortality. I was in Dirt Cowboy one afternoon and I was looking outside thinking - "suppose Dartmouth is still here in 500 years. Probably few things will be the same - definitely the people will be different, and there will be no memory of me, or most of the people I know. The fashions and trends will be different - it will seem funny to these future Dartmouth students what things we found important 500 years ago - the shiny cars, the brand clothes, the attitudes." This made me think that most of what we worry about in life or find important, is often something temporary that matters only now, and won't always matter. The choice of car or house, the amount of money we have, the clothes we wear, the people we aspire to, the body image that we crave - all these things are, in essence, inconsequential. A car that's fashionable today will be outdated in a few years. Same with clothes. Houses grow old and are torn down. Famous people die and are replaced by new famous people. And even the perfect body ages and deviates, bit by bit, from the current idea of "perfection". So what's left that matters? What will be there as long as there is a human civilization? Moreover, how do we make sense of this realizing how short life is and how little time we have with those we consider "close"?

The answer to the first two questions I was able to give is - people. People are really what matters on this world. Granted, people also change, and some die while others are born, but they are sort of the persistent theme of the last few millennia, the "glue" that gives history and culture their continuous character, and I believe that would be so until there are people. One other obvious thing that has always been there and will always be there, and in fact hasn't changed, is God. Those who know me also know I'm a Christian, so I believe in God and indeed, if you think about it, He is the only real constant left after all temporary, mutable things are taken out of the picture. One of the reasons why people are, actually, the important thing on earth is that they carry a part of God in them, as they were modeled in His semblance. As to the last question, I think of it more as a call to action - we should appreciate every single moment with the people around us, because we i) don't know how much time we have left on earth, and ii) we move a lot and proximity is not something that can always last for too long, so we need to enjoy each other's company while we can.

Something tells me that none of my conclusions are surprising, and I'm wondering what's been clouding my vision, and by extension the vision of what appears to be a large fraction of people today.