Life is stupidly too short

There is this saying that “life is so sweet but too short”, and indeed if you took a deep thought on what life is about, you’d be amazed to find that it’s nothing but just a short journey, which, whether you like it or not, will eventually come an end.On the time scale of the history of the Earth, an individual human lifetime is a mere blink of an eye. In this I mean, we’re born, we live, and we die--and then we are heard no more. Death is like a dreamless sleep from which we will never awake, our consciousness switched off forever.So, if this life is all there is what is the point of living if we’re all going to be dead in the end anyway? What difference does it make what we do with our lives? We may influence the lives of others, but they too are doomed to death. In a few generations most of our accomplishments will be totally forgotten, the memories of our lives reduced to a mere name engraved on a tombstone or written on a family tree chart.Death appears to render life meaningless for many people because they feel that there is no point in developing character or increasing knowledge if our progress is ultimately going to be frustrated by death. However, there is a point in developing character and increasing knowledge before death inevitably outdo us, to provide peace of mind to our lives and to the lives of those we care about for their own sake.And from the fact that death is inevitable, it does not follow that nothing we do matters now. On the contrary, our lives matter a great deal to us. If they did not, we would not find the idea of our own death so distressing.The fact that we’re all eventually going to die has no relevance to whether our activities are worthwhile, and the fact that Patrick Mafisango passed on just a three days after he had been summoned to the national team, shows how little if anything we know of what life has in store for us.His sudden death shocked not only the football fraternity but everyone who knew him as a talented football player or as an adorable fellow, who liked to live his life to the fullest.I still can’t believe Mafisango is gone forever and that we’ll never see his ever smiling face again—maybe on Judgement Day for those who believe.May be am being too sentimental or simply sounding irrational, but the Mafisango I knew didn’t deserve to leave us too soon. Not that anyone deserves to.As humans, it’s nearly a taboo to talk pessimistically about a dead person however bad they’re, or at least when people are still coming to terms with the inevitable.Mafisango was everything you would want from a top player—he had abundant talent, commitment, and the desire to win every match he played in and above all temperament—all aspects you find in modern day football players.Like any human being, remember no one is perfect; he had his run-ins with his coaches but always found a way of bridging those gaps, mainly by saying am sorry (...and I need another chance) on the field of play.The late Mafisango was the ultimate modern day player, who would be deployed to play in different positions—central defence, fullback, central midfield or even as a left winger, and he’d do it seamlessly without any complaints.He was such an approachable character, unless most so-called star players, and outgoing—he loved to live a self-regulating life, no wonder he went so soon. He’ll be dearly missed.