Existential

Ian Orejana ‘22

Midnight Mass, Squid Game, Move to Heaven, and Jesus Christ Superstar. What do they all have in common? They’re all shows that I’ve watched in the past two weeks… just kidding. Death. Yup, just straight up death. And you know what that means. It’s time to get existential, and I’m gonna bring you with me, because I desperately need to get my feelings out.

I’m not sure that it’s coincidental that literally all the shows that I’ve been watching lately deal with topics like death, grief, and sadness. In Midnight Mass, a supernatural thriller with Catholicism as its horror, everybody dies. In Squid Game, an intense K-drama about those in extreme debt who play life-or-death children’s games for money, everybody dies. In Move to Heaven, a wholesome K-drama about trauma cleaners, everybody dies. In Jesus Christ Superstar… well, you probably know what happens to him.

Don’t take those “everybody dies” things as a spoiler; they’re really just exaggerations, but that’s beside the point. The point is seeing all these people die has made me feel… existential lately. It’s not fun to realize, especially because I am a person who is always optimistic and uplifting. In facing these existential thoughts, I’ve become scared. In these shows, the characters more or less end up moving on. Whether they positively or negatively changed from the events that led up to people’s deaths, they still dealt with death. Through their grief they persevered, and if I’m honest, I envy that.

I haven’t had anybody very close to me die. Knowing that, I feel so unprepared for when one of my loved ones dies, and that is terrifying, to say the least. Now, having to watch all these people in shows I love die, makes me fear it more. This leads to more questions, like, “When will I die?” “What will people say about me?” or even, “Am I even living right now?” So, yeah, questioning reality and fearing death is a great combination.

Again, since I haven’t dealt with a death that is close to me, seeing these characters be able to live their lives makes me jealous. I also think about whether the actors would feel the same. At the end of the day, though, I have no answer, and I can’t give you one either. Nobody knows what happens when we die. We don’t know how it ends. Whether or not we get resurrected, reincarnated, or it just ends. We will never know until it happens.

I say I’m scared and unprepared, but if I turn on my optimistic attitude, that is all okay. I don’t want to believe that my life will end when I die. I don’t want to know what it will feel like to die. What I can do right now is just make sure I make the most of every moment I have with my friends and family. If it’s just a small drive to drop my friend off at their house, I’m going enjoy that moment. If it’s just me going into my sister’s room to say hi and leave, I’m going to enjoy that moment. I may not ever have the answers to the questions I have, and who knows if maybe in the next week after I’ve written this, I will forget this period of my feeling existential. I will feel scared and unprepared, but that’s just life, and life goes on. I can’t keep myself hung up on this, and its exactly why I decided to write about this in the first place. These thoughts have inspired me to find connection, live better, and just have more fun, because it could all go away.

I plan to use my newfound perspective on life and death to keep myself alive, because I’m just a human.