Talk:Maria Calavera/@comment-35434444-20181203151601/@comment-35434444-20181208135209

Both. But the dead aren't remembered in a mournful way; a way of trying to cling onto them and make them feel alive again, but to really get with thier departure. It's as a release. To think of it as a brand new journey, like the one Manny Calavera serves as a travel agent for at the beginning of Grim Fandango.

People like to think that thier loved one live on in thier memories, and while in a sense that might be considered true, why would you want that? Why would you want your loved ones to just live and live and live?

When you examine your feelings of death closely enough, like what this festival is designed to do, you realize that it's a total farce. You've pathologized death as this horrible thing that's never supposed to happen for no better reason than because everyone around you has acted that way since childhood.

It'sthe same with anything. Improvement is merely the shuffling around of emptiness. Things can be better than other things, but only in a very limited way. Carry good far enough and it flips over into it's opposite and becomes bad. Carry bad far enough and you appreciate all the advantages it has.

A strong, upright tree may make great wood, but the gnarled and krooked tree that's no use for anything lives a long time because nobody has any need to cut it down.

It's the same with the Día de los Muertos. All of the good things in life can only be good because they don't last. The deaths of your loved once are just as much a part of them as thier lives and you should celebrate them.