death and taxes


i’ve just completed my taxes. i filed. i should be getting money back. yippie skippie jump for joy oh lucky me! our gracious government takes too much money from me throughout the year and then gives just a bit of it back in april. my parent’s used to take the money i made, and give it back to me in small increments, so i couldn’t go spending all my money in one place. or so i assumed, instead they were training me for the real world.

however, making money is not the only time that i pay taxes… anytime i purchase anything, that’s right folks, when i buy anything, i also pay taxes. is this absurd? i foresee that in the future there will most likely be an ‘idle’ tax. idle tax? what does that mean you ask? i am predicting a tax that takes money from your idle account. i can see it all now, 6% tax if your bank account doesn’t have a transaction within a week. deposit or withdrawal, doesn’t matter… as long as you spend or make money you’re paying taxes. it’s when you’re idle that the government isn’t making money off of you, obviously they haven’t realized this loophole in the system.

there is automatically one concept that comes to mind when i ponder the world of taxes… death. death is different than taxes. death is just as certain per the famous saying, however it’s not something that one can schedule and prepare for by april of every year. death comes at expected times, as well as unexpected times. death brings times of reflection, it plops your life into perspective, and surfaces memories. taxes only piss you off and make you groan like you just stubbed your toe.

thinking about death sparks the question of my own death. i wonder, will anyone remember me when i die? possibly my ghost will linger for a few days, or even a week. hopefully i’ll be important enough to be in someone’s mind… 100 years post-my death, will anything about me or my existence be remembered?

i’m guessing that if anything is remembered about me it would be my name. 100 years after i’m put into the ground there’s a possibility that my name would be the only thing remembered… most likely because my name is what will be on the tombstone or plastic container that contains my ashes. ironically i had no part in the decision of my name. the work of my parents yielded the name i carry, and they were the ones who worked to get me into this world to begin with. that doesn’t sound like making a mark on this world to me.

should i become famous? famous people that have died left their mark, history books remembered and wrote about these people, and then i had to learn about them in a dry history class from an upset single-parent teacher. is that what i aspire to be?

it’s never been a dream of mine to become a topic on the chapter 3 history test, so the question is: what do i do with my life? answer: whatever the hell i want!

that’s right. i’ve unveiled the epiphany that i could be a drug-addict-homeless-bum getting loaded every night and sleep on the streets with a milk crate for a chair. nobody will know the difference 100 years from now. on the converse, i could devote all of my waking hours making money, kissing upper management’s arse, climbing the corporate ladder, and squashing the little guys in order to attain ‘a bigger piece of the pie’. still, who will care to find out what it is that i did 100 years ago? it appears that the only person on this planet that it matters to is me. the scenario of the bum the work-aholic have one commonality, neither would satisfy me.

the problem is that i can’t figure out what it is that i do want to do… someone asked me the other day, a very simple question. “have you met anyone who has a job that you’d just love to have?” –i’m still at a loss for the answer to this question. maybe i should become a tax collector.