A Business of Misery

Tip #9 | Remember the Balance of Life and Death

This story is part of a new compilation I like to call 'Stories that go well with lofi hip-hop,' so if you're interested, here is the stream I listened to while writing this.

Every grim reaper has different feelings—if you can call them that—about what it is we do. Most of us are neutral to the act of taking souls from their mortal realm and delivering them unto a blissfully ignorant afterlife; one where they may forever live out their perfect fantasies, but one where they will never truly have anything at all for eternity. Some acknowledge that what we do may be considered a miserable profession by those that do feel anything.

Others enjoy—if pleasure is possible for grim reapers to experience—the duty they've been given by the higher order of the universe. You might say they are interested in the behavior of humans upon death. I, for one, should I dare say that I "feel" anything toward what I and my fellow immortals do, would say that I feel fulfillment with every performance I execute. A grim reaper's "job," I would argue, is one of the most influential laws of the greater universe. As I have come to understand, filling such a significant role is not something that some collection of energy is compiled together to do by random chance.

There is something above it all that is pulling the theoretical strings of reality as even we reapers understand it. We are not the greatest power in the universe, and just like how humans cannot perceive or comprehend things beyond their own dimension, reapers, too, owe their existence and purpose to something above our ability to fathom. My point is that I do not let the ideas or perceptions of others dictate how I would feel about my existence were I given the emotional capabilities of a mortal.

No. I would be proud. "Why?" you may wonder. Because my responsibility is to keep the balance of life and death in check, and in doing so I get to experience the lives and deaths of countless humans. Humans are, indeed, fascinating and I wouldn't want to be the reaper for any other species in the universe. Humans pose such a unique challenge that I imagine other beings just don't give rise to. The whole point of a grim reaper's existence is to pass the restless soul of a dying being into the afterlife, but that cannot be done until the soul is at peace.

Humans are so incredibly complex that bringing peace to one isn't as simple as one can assume bringing peace to a dog or an insect would be, assuming such beings even have souls in need of guidance. It is the responsibility of a grim reaper to study what makes a human uniquely them and to plot the correct course of action to bring their soul to rest. Every excursion to the human realm brings something new and I can never tell what I will have to do, what I will have to say, who I will have to appear as in order to help someone let go of their ties to life.

If grim reapers required anything to keep themselves energized, then I would say it's a very taxing job. Beings with biological needs and with emotions are simply not suited for this sort of duty. Reapers may not allow anything to sway them in a direction other than straight ahead toward the afterlife. Sometimes it's as easy as letting the soul pass. Plenty of humans are quite content with the circumstances of their life when they die and a grim reaper needs to do little for them. Other times, a soul is not ready to pass and has to be pushed in the right way.

It's a very fine line that grim reapers walk having to stay emotionally uninvested. Again, most reapers don't feel much of anything at all, so it's not difficult to stay detached from the mortality of everything, but one also can't let the soul itself become invested in the interaction with the reaper. When a human learns that they are dying or have already passed, then sees the face of something recognizably earthly—especially in the case of a reaper taking on the appearance of someone familiar to the dying—they will want to cling to that someone or something for as long as possible.