Current mood:	pensive
Current music:	The Decemberists - Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)
Entry tags:	life, rants, writing

In reaction to Zippy's post.
Kerr-rist I ended up writing a lot. It's all pretty rambling too because I don't feel like editing or organising it better.
Here's a response for you Zippy, with my thoughts provoked by your recent entry.


For most of my life, I haven't been afraid of death. It used to be even that I didn't mind the thought of death at all. Not that I was suicidal or anything, I just felt very assured that, whenever my time would come, I would be ready for it. As an old lady who's seen everything she needs to see, or a kid having slipped and fallen in the shower, whichever. It would happen when it happened. Wouldn't be that big of a loss. I was just completely indifferent to it.
Life from day to day used to be mediocre to the extreme. I honestly never wanted to get up in the morning; what was the point?
I hesitate to say life was bad, because it really wasn't. Aside from my own little idiosyncratic problems, I didn't have any real 'issues'. I know way too many people who really have had bad lives. I've had nothing like that.

Enough about me; the point is, a couple years ago Zi I would have absolutely disagreed with you. Now, not so much. I've discovered my passion in life, language, I've gotten good friends, and another passion: love. I enjoy life now, as much as I can, and I never want to end it. I would not ever want to stop feeling this.
What does this mean in terms of you? You enjoy life, I guess. That's good.

But still: nonexistence doesn't terrify me. It seems perfectly natural. Remember what it was like before you were born? Of course you don't, and it's exactly the same thing. And when it happens, there's nothing you can do to protest. You're SOL. But you can't dislike it anyway because you are not there. It's nothing. You're no one anymore.
Death doesn't make me cry. Thinking of injections can make me cry, and sappy stories can even make me cry sometimes. But I could never be afraid to the point of tears of my own death.
I guess it does scare me on some level. When I had my wreck? I was terrified. I'm still uneasy on the roads sometimes because of that. But death isn't a thing I confront very often, so I don't think about it that much. Usually I concentrate on life.

I see your entry from two different viewpoints. One, an older one which I don't fully believe but I still can argue from, and you surely know how much I love to argue. And the other, similar to your stance but subtly different.

Yeah, I understand your frustration. It's not something we can change. Then again, you're wasting what little time you may have in trying to fight it. It will come when it comes - so enjoy what you have while you can.
(and again this is completely hypocritical, because I don't want you to stop writing stuff like this. I just encouraged you to keep writing stuff like this a few days ago. I love reading it and I love responding to it.)

We're all machines that eventually are going to wear down. It's an inevitability; it's entropy. Yeah, we're going to die. Maybe 70 years from now, maybe on Thursday.
It's not something you can change, and it's not something you can confront either. A person with a fear of clowns, in order to overcome that fear, will spend time being exposed to clowns until they build up a resistance: "Hey, these aren't so bad, why was I afraid of them so long?"
I think, though, if you spent time exposing yourself to death and the dead and the people affected by it, your feelings wouldn't be changed at all. If anything it would compound the problem. You'd still see that life ends, often far sooner than we'd like. The people left behind are devastated by it. And, in every case, there's the question hanging over everything of what might have been. What would have happened if he had lived to another birthday? Would things be any easier?
I'm sure I've mentioned my distaste for the common societal mourning rituals before. There is nothing sillier than dolling up a corpse, making them pale and shiny as a wax figure, and sitting them in your living room (or a home full of faux living rooms made especially for people to stare at the dead person in). Then, once they start to rot beyond recognition, put them and their non-biodegradable coffin, along with some keepsakes and valuables, into the ground.
It doesn't help me mourn. Mainly it makes me feel sick.

Obviously when people say that someone is living on through their memory, they don't mean it literally. (Or, if they do, they're stupid and I'm not talking about their belief right now.) However, it is important to be remembered. After someone is gone, if they have made their mark on the world, then their death is not a full erasure of their existence. Maybe it would help you, Zippy, to know that after you are gone people still think of you. You still changed things. Though you yourself are not around anymore to see it, your legacy lives on.
It's not true life after death. Of course. The dead person is still dead, and always will be. But, just because one is dead doesn't mean they didn't have a life. So keeping them in memory preserves that.

I don't think belief in an afterlife would help you either. I know you; and the day you convert from atheism is the day I become a monkey's uncle. Any solace you would find from an afterlife would only be false hope. I don't mean that from an arrogant, "I know atheism is the one truth of the universe" standpoint - I mean that even if you did find a religion that suited you, deep down you would only be using it as comfort, and you would still truly believe in nonexistence after death.

So I guess my bottom line is, I don't know what you could do to help with your fear of death. Best not to think about it I suppose. Isn't that what everyone else does to keep themselves from going insane? On one hand to just ignore the source of your deepest fears seems cowardly; on the other hand you can't change it, and you can't confront it, and you can't do a gosh derned thing about it because it's coming whether you like it or not.

I understand your fear, even if I don't share it to your same extent. But a lot depends on your perspective I think. So get going living that fulfilling life, yeah? And maybe, when you're satisfied with that, you'll have less trouble dealing with letting go.
Or at any rate, you'll have lived a fulfilling life! And that's worth it in and of itself.


Coulda spent the time I took writing that, to revise my research paper. Or do any one of half a dozen other things I should be doing. But, I had more fun writing this.

~Joy