archived from Telegram on 5 May 2025
i’ve probably been to 100+ mosques but i have only seen one tiny kampung surau in Malaysia with a monthly breakdown of deaths in the community, written in whiteboard marker and up for any visitor to see.
- Jan: 22
- Feb: 8
- Mar: 13
& so it went.
most death counters track deaths by a certain cause.
we count deaths by covid (ew), murders, airplane accidents, a terrorist state’s bloodthirst. you can find trackers like these throughout the media and they tend to exist to give you some objective scale of either
- how scared you should be
- how outraged you should be
& the truth is that it is completely crap at both of these things, because there is no objective scale.
1 death of a close one can cause your life to crumble. 300,000 deaths? if you’re a PAP politician, you just call that a “family quarrel”.
there is no objective scale of loss of human life. so why bother counting?
but that mosque’s whiteboard felt…different to me. And I think that it has something to do with the fact that those numbers did *not* invite analysis. There was no argument to be made, no trends to be observed.
You still could – statistics are great at creating infinite distractions for us to talk about, regardless of the actual value of the discussion. But because no information is offered about why 8 members of the community died in Feb 2024, you’re faced with just a reminder of the fact that they did die.
Of loss.
And that you, me and everyone we know will someday die too.
Our eventual deaths might be counted on a slick infographic produced for maximum social media engagement, reduced to a +1 as the likes roll in. Or they might never be counted.
In truth, it matters not.
The commentors will make the conclusions they were going to anyway – even if that number had one less. And we’ll be too dead to care.
but for those who don’t need any more information? for those who care?
for the ones to whom you, your life & all you leave behind counted for something beyond numbers and just the fact alone that you’re dead is really all that matters;
that’s the only kind of death that counts.
but until then?
to treat every life as if it’s all of humankind? to mark every death in whiteboard marker, on my heart? that’s how you live like death counts.