Sometimes I scare myself. I put people on these pedestals sometimes, almost making them equivalent to gods. Why do I do this? Logically, it makes no sense. These people aren't gods, and they aren't immortal and when they "die" or leave my life its like God, in a sense, has died.

There's another part of it though. And that's the atheist side of everyone that questions, what if there is nothing else out there? What if we are the only ones that exist in this huge universe, both mortal and immortal?

There's an excellent quote from John Steinbeck's East of Eden that is always in the front of my mind at times like these and it is:

"The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing
about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or
sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again;
theynever quite shine. And the child's world is never the same
again. It is an aching kind of growing."

John Steinbeck is a genius.