Born to die

By Erni-Szakács Szilárd

Life and death are connected. They do not exist alone, only together with the other. Somebody who is born must die. This is the rule of life. But why are we born? And what is life? Life is a gift or a punishment? Why are we born without being asked? What is the meaning of life? To live some years on Earth in order to die? And what comes after death? When we are young, we usually do not ask questions like this. One day comes after the other. But after a certain age, we ask questions like: Is there life after death? What happens with our soul? Will we be able to see after our death, the events happening on Earth? An eight-year-old child says very easily: I will die if I don’t get chocolate. and even a fifteen-year-old child says easily, without noticing the real meaning of his or her words: I will die if I don’t get a new laptop. But after a certain age, we begin to use the word die or death in another way, more seriously, more determined. And why do we suffer? What is the reason or the purpose of suffering? Can suffering have a concrete purpose? Is death the end of suffering? And what is eternity? We spend a lot of time making plans for the next week, for next month, and even for next year. It is important for us to know what we are going to do in two weeks, but do we spend time making plans for eternity? How long is eternity? Never ends? How old do we have to be in order to understand the meaning of life? And we cannot stop time. We cannot go back in time and correct our mistakes. There are a lot of theories about what happens after death. But which one is true? Once a man said that everything in this life is in vain because we will die. Then why do we live? Why do we establish a family and give life to our children? Just because of the social norms? Or something else? Is reincarnation something real? Do we get a second chance? Or if we were bad people, we have to go to hell? Time is like a river, you cannot stop it and you have to accept its rules. This is life. You are not asked if you want to be born, but after that, you have to accept the rules. I consider that life, death, life after death and the meaning of life are the biggest questions and mysteries of human existence.

Erni-Szakács Szilárd was born on the 16th of September 1999 at the City of Oradea in Romania. He belongs to the Hungarian national minority living in Romania and studied at school in his mother language. He speaks four languages: Hungarian, his mother language, Romanian, the official language of the state where he lives and two foreign languages, English and German. Is interested in subjects like Literature, Cultural Studies, History and Geography. He published his first book in 2023 entitled The representation of refugees in the British media.