With all the deaths happening in the world, from famous celebrities to the children of the Middle East, it's not hard to grasp the meaning of life. Life, so short and precarious, dangling on the edge of all our lives can mean so much and mean so little. How unfair is it that all these people are dying one after another and each gets so little attention aside from another. It's raining right now, outside. A thunderstorm covers Nashville and a tornado-making weather is threatening the northern middle of Tennessee. Iran is threatening to fire off missiles. The world is falling apart around us it seems.

Of course it has never been that the world was without strife and death. People, mere statistics in the scheme of things, fade away into digits on a calculator that just keeps adding. Personality and emotion are stripped away and all that's left is cold emptiness where once a heart lay. With all of the coverage of Michael Jackson, overwhelming the deaths of so many others like Ed, McMahon, Farah Fawcett, Mollie Sugden and just today Steve McNair, we are being confronted with a statement about our fragile humanity. Even our superheroes die. The good and the bad. The people we look up to for happiness, joy, and amusement. No one is safe from that unraveling mortal coil. And unlike in comicbooks, these superheroes won't have grand ressurections.

Aside from the celebrities that have died, look at how many have perished in the conflicts overseas and at home. Drug wars. Terror wars. Land wars. Religious wars. Where is the compassion? Where is the affront to death at these that is put into people like Jackson? It's not to say that he doesn't deserve to have such memorial outpourings about him, but even with his great accomplisments is his life any more important than that the children of Israel and Palestine?

Shouldn't every life have the same weight?

I guess not. Not in this world. Not in this time. Right now all people care about are those with prestige. We humans live in a heirarcical state of mind. Anything below us is unimportant. Above us is gold and diamonds. People like celebrities, touch the lives of many with their work, whether by providence or by sheer force of will, masses of people take into their hearts men and women who become role models for success. Ordinary people, everyday Jane and Joe touch only a few here and there, and that gap widens the further and further away.

The people across the great oceans are just names and numbers. We have no emotional connections to them, therefore when Malik and Gautum die, do we care?  Life is but a dream after all. It's only real to us if we can experience it ourselves.  

But, the lessons that our superheroes teach us about life are important. Look at what fame and fortune do to those that don't have personal checks and balances? The overuse and abuse their lives, their money, the people around them. They appear to cease caring whether or not they hurt others in the process of hurting themselves. They abandon moderation for ambivelent extravagence.

And look at the people on the street, starving, living out of their cars while the guy up the street drinks fine wine and throws out a whole meal because he just doesn't feel like eating after all.
 
But of course, moving on. 

I don't know if anyone really has a solution to all of this. There are far too many selfish, self-serving people in the world that any kind of solution would make those self-serving people in power quite unhappy. All I know is that I can only do my best to be the most selfless person that I can be, to help others as I would want to be helped.

Now, as fireworks are blossoming all over the United States, celebrating our Independence Day, I can only hope that the tide of death and unhappiness will turn to ash like so many colorful lights in the sky this night. But, if it were so simple, wouldn't we all live in happiness and prosperity?

I feel that a great horror is going to befall our people long before peace and prosperiety takes a foothold.

Will we survive? Of course. We humans are mammalian cockroaches. The real question is, what will become of us when the disaster is over? Will we learn from our past? Or will we begin the cycle all over again?