Recursive Ramblings

Driving back home late one night, much too fast for comfort, mulling over the deplorable state of city traffic and deteriorating traffic sense of reckless drivers, I couldn't help but recall the many road incidents and accidents I've been part of and stories of still more that I have heard from various acquiantances. I guess it was the mortality of my life, the fear of the dreaded wrong turn and the thought of the world as it would be without me that prompted me to step onto the brake pedal impromptu. As a consequence, while my car slowed down, my mind raced ahead with the intent of romanticizing the thought I had just had - that of transience of my life. And my mind echoed, life is, from one accident to another.

One thing led to another and I found myself picturing the world without me. What would change? A rather pessimistic question, suicidal, and loaded with pain, agony, anger and disillusionment with life. However, it is none of the above. My state of mind was not pesimistic, but philosophical. I was trying to understand death. I don't know why. And then it hit me for the first time - the notion that after I am gone, I will be a story who's physical existence though will have ceased to exist but who's mental projections will live on for a few more generations until they too fade away silently into oblivion; and I would be eventually lost in translation and forgotten for good. But before that, everyone who had ever known me, would stake a claim to the authenticity of my projection in their possession. I would be a finished story, waiting quietly to be released of all its residual physical memory, but being redefined with every breath the bearers of my identity would take - desperate flickerings of an extinguishing flame. If I survived, I would be a memory leak, and God won't be a flawless and expert programmer. That would be sacrilegious for then, I would be The One. Oh! what perspective. Does this mean that all immortals, messiahs, heroes of the past, leaders of the masses, and champions of causes are Ones in their own right? OMG!! I have tainted God and spoiled the singularity of The One!!!

Sorry for the detour. I suffer from this obsessive compulsive disorder of going off tangentially into vain pursuits of finding neverland ever so often, losing sense of the real and the tangible while on my way. Refocussing...

It is rather intriguing to know that you possess the power to define and redefine several times over the existence of a man once he no longer controls it. At the same time, it is scary to know that you can play God. How I wish I could know how I would be redefined once I am gone. Or, do I have the power to, if not define in as many words, but give direction to thoughts and formulations of my own life's story while I am still alive? Well, one such thing is my epitaph. The other is my life. INFINITE RECURSION. CORE DUMPED!!