Insights Into Being 6 Feet Under

So we want to know how much land a man needs. It is put very simply in the story that all the land a man needs is 6 feet, from his head to his toes. But is it so simple as that. Is that all the land a man needs? Perhaps we should go back in history and examine the idea of a burial. The idea of a burial is in no way a new idea. Stemming back to the Neolithic era of 3,200 B.C.E. we see the idea of a grave. This grave is not just a pine box stuck in a plot of ground that we see today but it is called a passage grave. Men would create large gravesites with passages to a large burial chamber. These burial chambers were not simple 6-foot plots of land where they would bury a person but they were covered in cave art doing tribute to the lives lost. Perhaps we should skip forward a thousand years or so to the Egyptians. The great Pyramids of Gizeh are better known to be tombs for great pharaohs. These tombs are not only much longer than 6 feet but they enter the idea of going above land for burial. These men who were buried in these tombs not only deserved a glowing tribute in the length and width of their area, but the height as well. So these tombs are large, so why is it that we now believe men only need the amount of space they take up? Is it because we no longer have the grandeur that these men once had in comparison to the rest of the world? Or is it because we no longer have a sense that we deserve over the top embellishments just because of our title? I would say it is a combination of the two that stems our sense of equality among all men and that leads us to believe that we all deserve the same ending.

So 6 feet is all a man needs right? Wrong. 6 feet may be all a man needs in death today, but what about yesterday when he was alive? All a man needs in the earth below his feet and anywhere those feet can carry him. Perhaps that is why people used to be buried in such large monuments. There was no way to lay a man to rest and have it represent all the land a man needs while he was alive. They would build large burial chambers and large monuments to resemble the land they needed. If your feet could take you around the world, why should you only have 6 feet to show for it? The amount of space you take up on this earth once you have past may be only 6 feet, but for us who are living, there is on limit to the amount of land we need. And even if society no longer lets us show how much land we needed in life after death, we can be remembered for how much land we took up in death after life.