The Continuance

    It doesn't take much to keep yourself eternally alive.

  In the past, any animate or inanimate being used to question its permanence. The animate ones were the worst about it. Those ones would constantly struggle with how to keep their identities and achievements alive, passed on through the life and death of their connections and larger social structures. The inanimate ones understood a simple truth that may give the animate ones some insight. 

  Things must remain or become whole to gain permanence.

  Take for example, us. The masks. We have remained a permanent, stable part of existence for as long as their have been those who don us. Inanimate or animate, we as masks are integrated into their being, giving them a bearing that keeps the madness of permanence at bay. As long as we remain whole, we remain. And because of that, we have become a bit of a comfortable bearing. 

  That is, of course, until some inanimate or animate one gets the bright yet foolish idea to break us.