What’s the point in all this? Why are we here on Earth? What’s it all for? What’s the meaning of life? Does everything happen for a reason? All these things and more used to tax what’s left of my brain. In some ways, they still do. Life, and death, seem so random, premature death being much more prevalent among good, young people. It makes no sense, but then philosophy was never a strong point with me
A song summed it up for me, Abraham, Martin and John, written by Dick Holler but made world famous, and rightly so, by Marvin Gaye who sang, “He freed a lot of people. But the good, they die young, yeah. I just looked around and he was gone.” Yeah, the good die young but sometimes the bad do, too. And – here I go yet again with my stock comment – there are many more good people than bad ones. That, I reckon, is why it seems the good die young, because there are so many good people the odds are not all of them will make it into old age.
I don’t really care that much if bad people live to be old. I don’t care what happens to bad people at all and that, actually, is a wider point. All of us are saddened to lose people, family members, friends and even famous people we have never met. We feel grief when they die and hopefully later we are grateful for being a part of their lives, able to celebrate their lives, achievements and legacies. When bad people die, people whose effect locally, nationally or internationally was overwhelmingly negative and damaging, we don’t mourn them. There is no admiration of achievement, no legacy. When bad people die, we don’t turn around and say, well maybe they were good after all, when they weren’t.
Good people generally don’t do good things to impress others. They do good things because they are good people. Some might have half an eye on their God of choice, hoping to guarantee that prime spot in the Heaven I don’t believe in. It’s just the way you are. In any event, people aren’t born good and bad. That’s part of life’s rich pageant and the things we learn along the way, usually from the people we meet along the way. It’s part of the human evolution.
Dick Holler was both wrong and right when he wrote “but the good, they die young” because life doesn’t work that way. I take the scientific view that we are here on Earth via the accident of our birth, having defied almost impossible odds to be born at all, and that makes us the lucky ones. Beyond procreation, there is no point to our lives since there is no grand design.
There’s no fairness nor unfairness since that would suggest a grand designer was at work, which I strongly believe there isn’t (although I am doing my best to respect those who believe there is, despite a chronic lack of evidence). Our lives are determined more by stuff that happens along the way, much of which science still hasn’t managed to explain, but surely will long after we have shuffled off our mortal coils.
We all know that life ends, we just don’t know when or how with any great certainty. What we do know – and we really do, in our heart of hearts – the good and bad die young and they die old. It’s just that there are many more of the former than the latter. That’s why it seems so unfair. Billy Joel should have known better.
