Without death life would devolve itself into a corrupt stasis by which all further life would be oppressed and made dysfunctional by the precedence of whatever had come before. Unable to evolve, unable to renew, unable to respond dynamically.
I know, everyone wants to live forever. Forever frapachinos, forever daily grind, forever wishing we had more time for the things we don't already make time for. Only forever, so we can put things off and deal with the immediacies of endless right nows.
Death is the other book end, balancing the shelf of life. It reminds us everything comes to a conclusion and the real contents are what comes in between.
Death demands that every generation reinvents itself, requiring us to relearn all that we will carry forth that we may call the actuality of ourselves.
To avoid contemplating death is to avoid acknowledging the possibilities of life.
"A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!"
I'm at the acceptance stage, mostly. I don't want to linger and suffer. I also don't want to force poverty on my family.
I've realized I need to avoid repeating the mistake of a late friend, who left a house full of computers and supplies sufficient to set up an era appropriate small business computer system for any year from 1977 to present. S-100 and CP/M, all the way up to 8 monitor setups!
Hopefully, we can pass along our house, and not have it stripped away by medical bankruptcy if either of us get ill and require too much care before we go.
Last week I watched Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal which deals with this question quite literally, as the main character spends most of the plot in conflict with the very personification of death, in the era of the Black Plague when it seemed everyone was dropping like flies.
Some people obsess over what's beyond and fall to despair or cling to religion when there's no definite answer, not that any of us know anyway. Death is probably easier to deal with if you're alone and have nothing, but that in itself makes life much more bland. Bergman probably agreed, at least that's the way I understand it now -- keeping yourself busy with community and the pure things that make life sweeter like strawberries, like family and friends, is how humanity 'ought' to face the realization that life is short. Sure, you'll be scared when the time comes but at least it was a life with meaning.
I just understand that its evitable, but I’m confident I’ll live for a long time. It’s not death necessarily that I fear, but the trauma it’ll leave on the people that love me when I die.
I know, everyone wants to live forever. Forever frapachinos, forever daily grind, forever wishing we had more time for the things we don't already make time for. Only forever, so we can put things off and deal with the immediacies of endless right nows.
Death is the other book end, balancing the shelf of life. It reminds us everything comes to a conclusion and the real contents are what comes in between.
Death demands that every generation reinvents itself, requiring us to relearn all that we will carry forth that we may call the actuality of ourselves.
To avoid contemplating death is to avoid acknowledging the possibilities of life.