Death and other predicaments

“This is Oomisi. The life-keeper.”, explained the woman.

“Oomisi is…. A giant turtle?”

“That’s what you could say but just calling her a turtle wouldn’t do justice for what she does to us. She is keeping us all alive.”

“This whole island is built on a giant turtle?”

I was unable to comprehend something that seemed quite obvious to everyone around me at the moment.

“She allowed us to live here, when we had nowhere else to go. Our country had been flooded, and the seas were full of mutants that would have preyed on our barks like they were but a snack. But Oomisi took us with her.”

“M-Mutants?”, I asked.

“Mutated fish. The smaller ones aren’t a problem. We eat them on a regular basis. The big ones are dangerous and I don’t even want to think about encountering a great one.”, explained the man.

“G-great one?”, I asked.

“The big ones attacked our ships but there are a few ones that are especially huge. Their size itself doesn’t allow more than maybe five to seven to exist on this whole planet, but if we ever encounter one…. Well…. They will be large enough to swallow even Oomisi in one bite.”

“That’s why we try to live every day in the best possible way. Of course, we think about sustaining our people, about our future, but at the same time, we have to be prepared, that our lives can be over just any moment.”, explained the woman.

As she said these words, everybody took a moment to look around like they expected the jaw of a “great one” to just now stick out of the water and swallow us in one piece to pull us into the deep.

“A-aren’t you afraid?”, I asked, unsettled about the thought.

“One can’t just live in fear of death. That’s why you have to live without regrets. Sounds quite hedonistic or stoic, I know, but you will eventually get to the core of what it means.”

“Live every day like your last, huh?”

“Something along the lines.”, answered the man vaguely.

“So you just accept that everything might end every second moment?”, I asked, suddenly feeling a surge of panic.

“If you can’t change it, why should you worry about it?”, the man shrugged.

I took a moment to calm myself down. He was right. But why didn’t they try to find a larger landmass? One that wasn’t flooded?

“How long have you lived on Oomisi’s back already?”, I asked.

“We forgot. I only know that even my grandmother couldn’t remember living somewhere else already.”

“Didn’t you ever find any landmasses, which you could use to settle on?”

“None. Well, once my parents generation encountered another civilization on another turtle, but after swimming together for a few weeks, they parted ways and nobody ever saw them again.”,

“I see.”

Given the situation it was clear why they had just given up on being saved. Or finding a safer place to live. Apparently this was All they had and this their everything was an awfully fragile thing.

We returned to the hospital, where we arrived only shortly after nightfall. It was agreed that they would show me the village tomorrow and that I should get a good rest before, but now that I was lying in the hospital bed, I felt like the whole island was slowly shaking from left to right, riding on the waves like apparently it had been for centuries.

Thinking about it, when did this turtle eat or rest? Was there a possibility she just took a really long breath before diving into the deep for basically as long as she had been swimming? It wouldn’t matter for the people here anyway. If being eaten alive or sinking to the ground with their homes and families. The cause might be different but the effect stayed the same.

I had lived my first life in a state of blissful ignorance of death. This itself wasn’t the problem, but it led to prolonging important decisions until tomorrow, or next week, next month, maybe until never. Not acting according to my own wishes, was likely one of the reasons I did not feel any kind of satisfaction during my old life. An obvious thought. If you only live for others and pretend to do it all for yourself, you will eventually have to realize, you didn’t reach any of your own goals. The regret would then haunt you in the future, long after the time passed when you would have been able to fulfill your dreams.

Another thing that always comes too late and usually along with the regret is the knowledge, that it wasn’t the fault of anyone but oneself. Nobody was finding excuses, but oneself. Nobody stopped anyone from making a decision, but oneself.

If my death back then would have come less sudden, if I had died of old age, had the time to mentally prepare for it, I certainly would have spent my last days on earth in regret. Was this really, what I wanted to be my last thoughts? “If only I had….”?

I silently shook my head.

I wasn’t ready to die. Not in this world, nor in another. And it took me only took me four previous lives to finally realize this. I had truly been an idiot.

The thought of another untimely death kept me awake for quite some time but the exhaustion from our previous hike took its toll. As I fell into a deep dreamless sleep, I started to get a feeling about what it meant when they said you couldn’t just live in fear for all your life. I didn’t even manage it for just a few hours. Having to lead a full life in this state was only possible by living without regrets. Being able to go basically every second. sounds like some philosophies are more practical approaches than they seem, depending on the situation.

But then again thinking about all of this was just an academic matter as well in this world as it seems.