To live
2026-09-07

My grandma just passed away.

I have many feelings about that. It's someone that I hold quite dearly, someone that I have fond memories and that took care of me during an important, difficult part of my life.

It's also a weirdly grounded moment to me, because the world keeps turning.

My grandmother passed away in Brazil, while I was sleeping soundly in Finland. I woke up with a phone call from my father, telling me about the news, worried that I wouldn't be the last family member to know about it since I'm living far away. And the world keeps turning.

This weekend, I participated in a Game Jam. I couldn't finish the game; I tested building the game with AI. I have many opinions about AI, and I'm also very worried about the current state of the world, where it is heading at. I'm also worried about my place in this world; I always dreamt about making games, but how do I make a living when AI is slowly, insidously occupying the place I was suppose do be at? Of course it hasn't replace my fully yet, but it's getting there, and it might get there sooner or later.

Once it does, the world will keep turning.

Earth rotation doesn't care about my worries, and that is a soothing thought, somehow.

To live is a surprisingly simple thing: we exist, and once we stop living, we do not. We might make living more or less complex with things like faith, religion, social norms, expectations. But ultimately, the experience of living is simple, beautiful. We are living, until we do not. The inevitability of time is an anchor to reality, to remind ourselves that Earth will keep spinning, stars will fade away, galaxies will collapse, we'll mourn our dead, remember the good times we had with our most loved family members. And that's OK, because the grand scheme of things is that there are no bigger plans than us living our lives.

I loved my grandma dearly. She took care of me and my sister when she didn't need to. She worried about us, she took great leaps into helping us, in making sure we were loved, sheltered. Now she is gone, and I have many feelings, including pain, including relief. One thing she teached me was that I had to live my life. She wanted me to travel, to experience things abroad, to learn new things. What is the point of that if we are all going to die, is something that I asked myself when I stopped believing in God a long time ago. What is the point of everything we experience if there is nothing after that?

And I guess that's kind of a point, maybe not the exact perspective my grandmother wanted me to look at things but similar in nature. It's a bit of an exercise of faithless faith - to truly experience life is to live without a purpose in death. Is to "just live". The world will keep turning; that's OK. There is more to experience, until there is none. I like making games; I'll keep making them as long as I can. I loved my grandmother a lot; I'll keep loving her, but now I'll also mourn here, and I'll feel happy and sad and the same time. I don't need to be logical about it. To live as a human is to accept the dilemma of existing in a world in which the natural state is to not exist. So I will until not, and I'll experience life like my grandma told me to.

Thanks for everything, grandma. I'll always love and remember you.