Warning: This will bum you out. Guy's Last Post Before Dying

[No Limit]

Saw this on reddit today and it was quite emotional. Always odd to get this emotional about someone you never heard of until today:

http://penmachine-bu.appspot.com/

I can't imagine being that calm in such a situation, and as sad as this is it's almost inspirational at the same time. Do you think you would be capable of writing something like this knowing you were about to die?

 

[CptStern]

ya reading that is like pulling out all your nose hairs out at once.


BRB commiting suicide

 

[CyberPitz]

Wow....not much else to say.

 

[The Monkey]

Aye. Very moving stuff, got my choked up a bit. I felt like there wasn't anything specific that was extremely poignant, but the whole context of it make it powerful. I can't quite explain it.

 

[Krynn72]

File not found?

 

[Warped]

can someone repost what he said?

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

http://penmachine-bu.appspot.com

I cried.

 

[Krynn72]

can someone repost what he said?

The link just had two urls pasted into it on accident. BHC posted a fixed one.

That was a good post, not as depressing as I expected at first, in fact it had some pretty hopeful undertones. I still teared up a bit when he started talking about how he wondered where his kids would be in several years and such.

 

[Raziaar]

I'm not going to read this.

 

[No Limit]

It is really depressing since you are reading a letter from a guy who left a family behind and died at a very young age of cancer. But like Krynn said the message behind it is in some ways hopeful. It's not often that you get to get inside the mind of a person that knows he is about to die, and I think there is something to take away from that.

I would guess most of us have thought about death. If you haven't or you are having a really nice Cinco De Mayo which you're enjoying very much you should probably stop reading now. But what struck me the most about this blog post was the following:

Why do I mention all this stuff? Because I've come to realize that, at any time, I can lament what I will never know, yet still not regret what got me where I am. I could have died in 2000 (at an "old" 31) and been happy with my life: my amazing wife, my great kids, a fun job, and hobbies I enjoyed. But I would have missed out on a lot of things.

And many things will now happen without me. As I wrote this, I hardly knew what most of them could even be. What will the world be like as soon as 2021, or as late as 2060, when I would have been 91, the age my Oma reached? What new will we know? How will countries and people have changed? How will we communicate and move around? Whom will we admire, or despise?

What will my wife Air be doing? My daughters Marina and Lolo? What will they have studied, how will they spend their time and earn a living? Will my kids have children of their own? Grandchildren? Will there be parts of their lives I'd find hard to comprehend right now?

That's one of the biggest things I take away from life. Life is interesting. None of us know what is to come, and that makes life the best suspense movie ever made. I can't wait to find out how the world will be in 10, 20, or even 50 years. I want to know where people I love will be and I want to be there to help them as much as I can. I want to know if the LHC did indeed destroy the universe. And the main thing that bums me out about death is the fact that it will deny me the opportunity to know what happens next and it will deny me the opportunity to have an effect on anything that happens. As the blog post says Im not really scared about the concept of death, nothing scary about it really. And eventhough the fact that with death you get to miss out on the future is depressing at the same time the fact you got to experiance life in the first place is something to be happy about.

 

[Bad^Hat]

This made me a little sad and a little hopeful, but also quite jealous, which I realise is an odd reaction to something so sombre and personal. I don't mean it in a contemptuous way, merely that I envy that sort of hypothetical retrospection that No Limit pointed out. I really can't relate, at this point in my life, to that feeling of satisfaction - that I could look back on my life if I were to die tomorrow and feel content with my experiences to date. I know this is kind of a whine post, and I don't wish to take away from the sobering nature of the article, but I think that feeling is something that anyone can aspire to, and the lack thereof is something worth lamenting. On the other hand, an article like this is just the kind of kick in the arse that might motivate someone like myself to enact real changes in their life to realise that goal, so I suppose I should also feel a little thankful.

Gosh, way to liven up the thread, Hat.

 

[Letters]

Didn't get past the first paragraph before I got bored. Sorry, bro, if you gonna die of cancer you gotta be captivating and less... less... predictable

OH god that was insensitive wasn't it... ****... oh well, he's dead anyway... ****, did it again.

 

[morgs]

Why the **** did you even make that post.