It’s generally accepted that one’s life is fulfilled by the nature, strength and richness of the relations with the people living around him. In making this assumption, one tends to forget about one’s relations with the dead, despite the fact that the dead are in a way more approachable and accessible through their works than the uncertain relation with the living. One is constantly prided and gratified with the level of acceptance he squeezes out of his relations with the living, but here again one might mistake that the reciprocity of acceptance is only likely with the active relations (relations with living people), but upon careful examination one finds out that it is simply the other way round although not so revealing in nature. Through the works of dead, one gains an idea of their lives and the times in which they had lived, now upon conscious evaluation, one is bound to stare into the philosophic equivalents of past lives, of a whole lifetime, and the perceptions by posterity. These works of the dead including the perceptions of the subsequent generations are studied by the present generation, ways of living skeptically argued and debated, and an intellectual exhaustion is thus obtained.
This fulfillment of human existence includes erudite debates on philosophical forms. People with different perspectives share their labored advocacies with each other; we find scientific extravaganzas frequently snubbed by the antagonists of the field, we find the same advancements in science embraced equivocally by some, and staunchly by others. Some relate the scientific inquiry with metaphysical reasoning, some relate it to epistemology, while others try to reduce it into the universal language mathematics (it is contrary most of the times, Einstein derived general theory of relativity on paper in mathematics first, he later found the scientific expression for this theorem, and was overcome with awe that he spent most of his time fortifying his mathematical equations underlying the scientific expression that was to debunk four centuries of scientific inquiries). Darwin spent more time in fortifying his work than the time he spent in intellectually defining evolution, for he envisaged anger and fury from all the proponents (otherwise referred to as creationists). Freud spent more time in supporting his claims (he spent long and agonizing times with his patients in the pursuit of supporting data).
All these works of greatness represent an inquiry in life; the advocates of these works in present generation are not merely studying them as a necessity, but as a means to fulfill their inquiries, a means to salvage their impelled desires from shattering into ruins, a means to find expression to their hitherto void conscience.
The relation with the dead that one accrues out of this enriched conscience serves them a flavor of life much richer and much fertile than any relation with the living, for the great majority of the living are like zombies walking aimlessly towards their graves. All that the living cares about is the epitaph on their graves, together, they work towards a better epitaph, but sadly it still remains an epitaph and nothing more. This majority is so engrossed in pumping up their epitaph’s acceptance quotient that they turn their backs to the dead, and when it’s the time for final revelation, they implore for acquittal; from whom, and for whom, they know not.
Throughout the history, some gravestones of great men have served as mile stones for the progress of our civilizations; where other gravestones simply stood as sources of recollections of wasted potential, these gravestones (of great men) have showed us the right direction (as mile stones), and one wonders what would have happened otherwise, would we have drifted off into the wild?
With the weight of these indubitable findings, I put forward my contention that it is not the relations with the living (parents, spouses, kids, friends, relatives…..), but the relation with the dead that enriches and fulfills our existence.
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