When I Die

Death is emptiness. A void. You can't feel or think. So why is it that when a person dies, people are crying for him? They often say things like: "He was so young, he didn't get to live enough.", or "She was just about to get married, poor girl".

I always felt that mourning for someone is egoistic. The dead don't know or feel anything, they aren't aware of themselves dying and other people being sad. When someone dies, you should mourn for your loss, not his.

Your image of yourself is constructed from the sum of all the feedbacks you get from the people around you. It's like a mirror. When you meet someone, the reaction you get from him is the reflection of yourself in the mirror. You define yourself by how other people see you. What is pretty, ugly, smart, successful? You can't say these things about yourself. The society lets you know who and what you are.

When someone dies, you lose one of those reflections of yourself. You lose a part of yourself. The closer the person was to you, the bigger part you lose. That's the real reason people are so sad when someone dies. If the person who just died, was the only person in the world who told you that you are the most beautiful woman in the universe, that statement just lost its meaning. You no longer get that feedback from anyone else, so it's not real for you anymore.

You can say it's similar with breakups. They are so hard because a very close person to you, who reflected (usually) some very good parts about yourself, isn't there anymore.

When I die, please, by all means cry for yourself, for your loss. But don't cry for me.