“Do people grativate towards death or away from life?”
I usually half-joked that Obama saved my life. Not because of any of his political achievements, simply because the day I was supposed to die, I decided to wait for his reelection result instead. Sometimes, I claimed that it was Naruto. Since another day that I was supposed to die, I decided to wait for the manga to end.
There were multiple other reasons over the first half of the 2010s. One of which was Jo, my best friend Jo.
While I was talking about my last days on Earth, Jo didn’t ask me not to think about it. Neither did he ask the reason. Instead, he asked if I knew Herzberd’s two-factor theory.
I told him I did. In case you don’t, the two-factor theory is a well-known motivational theory distinguishes between motivators, that give positive satisfaction, and hygiene factors, the absence of which results in disatisfaction.
“Do you think people gravitate toward death or away from life? Or fuck them, do you know if you are running toward death or away from life?”
To which I didn’t have an answer. But the simple idea of applying motivational theory into a matter of life and death was thought-provoking and it woke my thirst to know myself better.
We spent days, weeks, and then months in the library and on the Internet trying to figure out an answer.
And that was the reason I rarely talked about. Because comparing to waiting for Naruto to end or for the result of Obama’s reelection, it was too absurd.
Jo passed away last year in a car accident. I didn’t cry. I just made a joke.
That if Mitch Albom was right and there would be five people I met in the afterlife, I would ask him just one question.
“Did death run towards you, or was it life that was running away?”