The world is constantly changing around us, whether it be in politics, the economy, science, or history. How, then, can humans even wish to have a semblance of an ordered life with the chaos around them, especially when life is so short compared to the span of time the earth has been in existence? Humans construct concrete structures to give some sort of tangible meaning to life, like government and social hierarchy. Humans, as a species, try to leave an imprint on the world they live in, whether as a generation or as a singular person. This is what we strive for in life, and what pushes us to get up every morning of our short lives. Gilgamesh is a perfect example of humans trying to fathom and leave behind something on the fleeting and ephemeral world. Gilgamesh realizes, just as all humans eventually realize, the futility of his task when Utnapishtim wisely tells him, “There is no permanence” (106).
Utnapishtim’s statement, though fabled to have been said thousands of years ago, still applies to the world today. His declaration means that everything is always in flux and that nothing can last forever. For Gilgamesh, this means that, no matter how hard he tries, he will not be able to bring back his dead friend, nor should he. Gilgamesh and Enkidu’s relationship was not supposed to last forever. Utnapishtim’s statement also works on the flip side—Gilgamesh’s pain cannot last forever either. Gilgamesh is meant to change as a person throughout his time on the earth. Gilgamesh wants something to hang on to, a constant in his life, and he thinks that Enkidu will be that when his mother tells him, “You will love him as a woman and he will never forsake you” (66). While Gilgamesh wants something unchanging, Utnapishtim tells him that life always changes, that our lives are always in flux.
Humans see the flux of our lives every day. In the early fall of 2008, Americans watched in horror as, almost overnight, our economy fell to pieces. The next generation is watching as Social Security seems to be failing. Politics and political policies in general change more often than most Americans change clothes. When Obama’s administration found and killed Osama Bin Laden, his popularity skyrocketed, but once again it is diminishing. In science, a lot of things that physicists and chemists once held as absolute and true are turning into fallacies. Recently, physicists discovered that some parts of atoms when flung around the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland move faster than the speed of light. This may rip to shreds many of Einstein’s theories. Humans actively see the world around them changing.
Humans carry on in this chaotic and ever-changing world because we try to achieve something. Once we know that we only have approximately 78 years to live on the Earth, most people take it as a call to arms. Like Gilgamesh, we try to leave a legacy, something for the next generation to remember us by. This is what gives our lives meaning. We cannot live forever physically, so we try to do the next best thing— live on in the hearts and minds of the people we left behind. For Gilgamesh, his entire heroic quest was to “set up [his] name where the names of famous men are written” (72).
History and written records and legends are how humans create eternal life. Every time one hears George Washington’s name, he lives on, even though his physical body is dead. This is why, by the end of the epic, Gilgamesh gets his wish. He lives on in every student that has to read The Epic of Gilgamesh and all people who have heard his name.
Another way that humans can survive, other than to complete what they think is there purpose, is that we create order in chaos. We have a routine that we follow. In the BOW area, and most of the northeastern portion of the United States, children more and more are expected to attend elementary school, attend middle school, attend college, get a job, get married, and have children. In this way, we can create some sort of normalcy from the disorder of life. We create government and social hierarchy to govern the lives of people and to separate them into neat categories. They are tangible things that we know will always exist in some form.
As humans, we want to create order from confusion and have something tangible. We cannot live in the chaos that life gives us. Humans know that life is short, but the memory of collective people is very long, so we try to leave a legacy behind us. Although, as Utnapishtim said, “There is no permanence” (106), humans try valiantly, and sometimes succeed, in living fulfilling lives that people will remember them for.
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