>>18
Every time I read an article about a mathematical concept named after someone I just can't help reading about the author themself as well, and if they're dead I get all sad and depressed about how death indiscriminately took away yet another brilliant mind, and how the work they left behind serves as a reminder of one's mortality; and if they're not dead, they're usually really old and it makes me sad that that soon, they too will be lost to the nothingness and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
And it makes me realize that the same will happen to me, that no matter how many papers I write and how many discoveries I make, I will slowly degrade and eventually cease existing. I look at other people and wonder how they deal with the futility of their own lives, how they deal with their knowingly limited existence. Maybe they simply grew accustomed to the idea, they became desensitized to the plight of being human, of being mortal. Or maybe they simply never thought about it, they never considered past a few months or years in the future. Maybe they believe god will swoop them from the forever hungry claws of oblivion and ensure their continued existence, be it heaven, hell, or anything in between; perhaps this is some sort of denial, perhaps it is one of those delusions one creates and revels in to avoid dealing with the excruciatingly painful truth. I wish I could be so careless, I wish I could believe there is a saviour.
Alas, I am doomed to lead a bounded life, to do a finite number of things, too few things, much fewer than I would have wanted to, and to cease existing before year 2100.
And no I'm not the panic attack guy. He asked me to fill in for him today.