Death ?

“We were meant to learn in our time together.”
-Jonathan Livingston Seagull

This quote is strange to say the least. It doesn’t give me something new to really think about but rather reminds me of one of my oldest fears: that of loss. When we are done learning, what happens? Do we split ways and go opposite directions? If that’s so, then what happens after I can learn no more from my mother, father, or friends? What is that opposite direction? Death, our continuing to live when our choices in life lead us separate ways, the loss of communication? Considering how clingy a person I am I don’t think I’d like to stop learning from a lot of people because quite personally I love them so much that I’d miss them when our time together was up. Which leads to a second argument: do we ever stop learning? The universe is so open-ended that it could be possible that if people stuck around only to be learned from that I could keep the people that I love the most around the longest, however humans are so close-minded that I suppose such a thing couldn’t be possible even if physics allowed. Humans, I understand are not siphons for the universe’s knowledge, which just returns the fear of loss and the anger that accompanies it. After all, one person can only know so much.
I lost a man who was as much a part of my family as my own parents. He was hit in a car accident. And it puts this quote into perspective. I only cried twice for the man: once when i was told what had happened and the second time at the funeral when I saw the coffin. Even in death he still was able to teach me which leads one to further question the context into which I put this quote. Are people truly gone after death? Is death a limiting factor in our ability to learn from one another, because he gave me more than just a father figure and a playmate for years; at his funeral I learned that I have more family that just the blood relatives and that I truly am important to some people and that I’m perhaps stronger than I first admitted to. I have very low self-esteem normally, which is why my new focus on fixing everything that I have come to hate about myself this year is such a massive turn around. It’s only ironic that I would attend my first funeral under such circumstances and that I come to such a conclusion, such as I most likely will not be the person to make all the changes in my life alone. Of course it certainly is not the quote alone that leads me to this conclusion but the experience which makes the quote worthwhile.