Gilgamesh IX & X

Gilgamesh is actually a really good friend. I would never have imagined that before, but after all the long voyage he had to go through, and having to do it all alone, we can really understand how much he cared for Enkidu, what he really meant to him. This makes me think of the song that goes “you don't know what you got 'til it's gone” (A Little Bit Longer, by Jonas Brothers). And how that usually happens to all of us, we get used to having a good life and then when things get harder they seem to be impossible, just because we are not used to them and when they are over, nothing is like it used to be, and we then realize that we actually had a good life, we understand that we had been privileged and didn’t make the best of it, or even worst, didn’t realize we had it.
Gilgamesh had to live through that. Having a great companion that would help him, that would be there in times of need and would always be the leader, the one in charge. Now Enkidu is gone and Gilgamesh is left with nothing, except the knowledge of having wasted what he had: his brother, companion, Enkidu.
We can also see how Gilgamesh has improved in his journey and after all the trials he had to go through. At the beginning when he first got to Veiled Siduri, the tavern keeper, he told her that he had been the one that had beaten the lions, Huwawa, the Bull of Heaven and so much more, and then after having his small selfish moment he was able to be humble and realize that he had had some help, that Enkidu had done that and so much more for him, when he explains his story again to the Urshanabi, the boatman.
I think that something really interesting is how he wonders if he should die too. We sometimes think “why didn’t that happen to me instead of him/her? Or why did it happen to him/her and not to me? ” if can be frustrating, but we have to understand that we are all different and we all have different things we have to go through in life.
To finish, I really liked the wise things that the old man told Gilgamesh at the end. He gave many examples of how there are so many things that don’t last as long as we believe they did. “From the very beginning nothing at all has lasted.” (64).