“Marla doesn’t have testicular cancer.  Marla doesn’t have tuberculosis.  She isn’t dying.  Okay in that brainy brain-food philosophy way, we’re all dying, but Marla isn’t dying the way Chloe was dying.”

                For all you fans of disgustingly realistic, horrifyingly repulsive, provocative and psychotic comedies out there, yes, I did steal this quote from Chuck Palahniuk’s first and probably most famous novel, Fight Club.[1] Is this completely fair; to steal another writer’s quote for the sake of writing something on a similar topic?  Is this completely honest to take one person’s idea and write about it as if it’s my own?  The question is not whether it’s fair or honest to have taken Palahniuk’s quote in an attempt to write a fairly decent essay of my own.  The question is more or less, why I chose this particular quote. 

                Are we, as human beings, all slowly dying?  Some people would unquestionably say yes.  Of course we’re all slowly dying.  Every minute in our lives is one less minute of existence; one minute closer to death.  My family almost always eats dinner together.  One could always tell when my mother had had a particularly trying day.  Those were the days that she would sing during dinner.  What would she sing?  She sang a lively little tune with a chorus that went, “one meal closer to death, sweet Jesus.  One meal closer to death…”  I always considered this song very depressing and melancholic and not a suitable song to be singing at the dinner table.  (That is, if any song is suitable to be singing while eating a meal.)  Therefore, I always hated it when she sang this song.  Why?  Sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t solely because of its melancholic tone, but rather, at least partly, because I was scared of death.  I recognized the fact that this silly tune had a greater truth about it.  I was one meal closer to death.  Every second of my life was one second less.  Each wasted day, was a day I could never get back.  So, if you think about it in a sense, yes, we are all dying…minute by minute.

                Yet others would say we are all slowly living.  Every minute is not a minute closer to death, but rather a minute more spent in the full fledges of life; a minute more learning about yourself and others on this wonderful planet we call Earth.  Each moment is a moment filled with vigor, vigor for life.  Are these people simply more optimistic than the people who tend to live by the philosophy that we are all slowly dying?  Are these people simply ignorant to the untimely truth that the world’s depressed, emotional, and pessimistic poets have already discovered and embraced? 

                Either way you choose to look at it, one thing’s easy to understand.  This is no ordinary argument.  Arguably, everyone is right.  Every day we are alive is another day of experience and memories; of life.  Every day we are alive is one day less on Earth; one day closer to death.  Oddly enough, this is an argument where everyone is also wrong.  Can we really be both?  Can we, as human beings, be both living and dying at the same time?  Is that probable? I think the answer to the aforementioned questions, is one loud, resounding, yes.  For why not?  Why couldn’t a person be both living and dying at the same time? As I write this seemingly unimportant essay, I am listening to probably one of the most poetic songs I have ever heard.  This song, “Learning How to Die” [2], has a simple chorus that says: “Don’t talk about how every living thing goes away.  All along I thought I was learning how to take, how to bend, not how to break, how to live, not how to cry, but really, I’ve been learning how to die.” Maybe that’s all any of us are doing really.  Each day in our lives is preparing us for our ultimate demise. 

Then again, maybe I’m completely wrong and much of this argument simply has to do with how much a person values life.  Do they “live every day to the fullest”, or do they wish every day they weren’t stuck in this complete hell-hole.  I’ve been on both sides of the road.  These days, I seem to have found somewhere in the median.  I just hope I don’t get hit.