I’m 51 and work in the health-care field. Lately, I been thinkin’ about dying. Especially when I have to work with someone younger than me who’s just had a heart attack, and I (we) lose him/her.
I spend about 60 bucks a month on supplements, I ride my bike on the average of 75 miles a week, and I am working my way down to my desired weight of 175. I am very healthy. And I am very thankful!
Maybe there will come a time when my body and mind will be so tired out that it will welcome death, but right now there are still things I wanna do.
My question, if any of y’all wanna answer it, is how do you handle them ol’ mortal thoughts?
Mortal thoughts, eh? I started thinking them when I was about 12, an’ scared myself silly.
Seriously - I wouldn’t mind too much if I dropped dead at any time. I get concerned about suffering, the length of old age, denial of treatments based on age … all of which I’ve seen, and I’m not confident will improve in the forseeable future.
As to thinking actually about what death is like? Switch off the lights, last one out locks the door.
Mine started when I was seven, but I didn’t get really depressed about it until I was eight. For the next twelve years I would lie awake for hours each night trying to come to terms with losing everything I was. I wasn’t a lot of fun in the daytime, either.
When I was about twenty, I had a flash of thought. “I’ve been non-existent before,” I said. “It wasn’t so bad. In fact, throughout the vast ages of the past and future universe, my role is almost entirely one of non-existence.” Granted, this would not be a comforting thought for most people. But for me, it brought peace and acceptance. I think the essence of it is that I shifted the boundaries of my self-image to include much more than just me. (Did I just invent Hinduism?)
The next revelation came with my concussion. After I crashed my bicycle, my unoccupied body was just lying there in the street, on a curve no less. I could very easily have been killed by the next car to happen along. Very easily. No pain, no fear, I was just gone, and could have stayed gone. Pretty much took the sting out of the whole (potential) dying experience.
When I hit 41, I started to feel that I was running out of time. Death is once again in my daily thoughts, but mainly just as a reminder to make good use of the time that remains.
I don’t wish to become tired of life so that I can welcome death. I realize that I could still find myself in a state where death would be a blessing, but my goal is to be working on a meaningful project at whatever moment death may come. Death should be too soon.
The idea of the bodhisattva vow may just be a pretty narrative. But I’ve made a sort of Pascal’s Wager with it, so thinking of my life ending isn’t really discomfitting–got no plans for it anytime soon, you understand, but still.
There are times however, when the thought of living again after that non-existence is as troubling to me as lots of folks find the idea of death itself. The downside of the Wager.
Death will come for us all sooner or later. I think the important thing is, did you do the things you wanted to do in your life? Did you really LIVE? If so, then share a drink with the reaper just before it’s over, to celebrate a life well-lived.
If not… what are you doing sitting at a computer? Go out and LIVE, damnit. You don’t have forever yanno! ;]
-Ben
I’ve been experiencing nasty mortal thoughts recently, and as a committed atheist was finding it hard to deal with the idea that there will come a point at which “I” will not exist. I don’t like the idea of simply ceasing to be, but I remain committed to my belief that this is what happens since i can’t concieve/believe anything else.
And then I had a a bit of a revelation (might seem obvious to other people, but it struck me) - what’s not to like? It’s not like i’m going to exist to dislike not existing. I won’t have any emotions about it because i simply won’t be. It won’t be good, it won’t be bad, it won’t hurt and I won’t be trapped in some bizarre non-existing dimension/realm. I agree with Peregrine - there was a time when i didn’t exist before, and there will be a time when I don’t exist again. I find this slightly sad, because i would quite like to go on living for a long time, but it also comforts me in some way.
This is only a very brief outline of what I mean and I’m not feeling at my most eloquent today, but i guess i just wanted to say that it’s been on my mind a lot recently too.
Quasimodem, I went through that a few years ago. I was just turning 40, and had lost both of my sisters in 15 months time. One sister was 49, the other only 51.
I began to wonder if I even had a decade of life left to me. Is that all there is, my friend? Would I die too soon? Every skipped pulse that I felt, every irregular heartbeat; and I would go Fred Sanford [It’s the big one!]
It took some time and soul searching, but I got over it. But reflecting on mortality was a good experience to me. I vowed I wouldn’t waste one, single moment of the time allotted to me. OK, so that didn’t last. My life is what it is, and I am basically a happy person.
I try to find delight in the world, in whatever form it may take. Watching my granddaughter take her first four steps yesterday was a gas! I could die today with no regrets after witnessing that.
It would seem to me that living in fear of death is akin to being unable to see the forest for the trees. Get as much as you can out of it, and when it’s over, it’s over. I echo Peregrine’s sentiments; when we die, we just go back to the state we were in before we were born.
Hoo boy. These thoughts are why I’m awake at five a.m. most nights. They always seem to creep up on me in the dark. At work too, since I’ve got a job in a hospital-hard not to think about it when you’re doing autopsy specimens.
I find I’m sort of stuck with a conundrum. What bugs me most is the thought of not being, not being aware in whatever form. But if I cease to be, I can’t be bothered then can I? It can only bother me now when I do exist so it really shouldn’t bother me at all. But it does… mostly as a sudden clammy feeling when my guard is down. I try to focus on just being, right here and now. But it doesn’t always work. And it probably doesn’t help that I’ve got no one to go through this with.
Quasimodem
Sometimes I get, well… angry …when people die. Like when I spend all night in Blood Bank, say, working with the physicians to try to keep some guy from bleeding out and we fail anyway. I’ve always kind of wondered if that was an appropriate reaction. Do you ever feel mad about it? Or is it just me?
Oh yes. Sometimes it really pisses me off when we lose someone, they are younger and the reason they ended up dead is because they messed with something dangerous. I think to myself, “here I am supposedly doing what it takes to keep myself healthy, and there you lie, dead because you were stupid!”
Then I get mad when we lose someone who drops dead for no reason other than its their time to go.
Dwyr, when I stop getting mad, it will be time for me to get into another line of work. I get upset because I care and I suspect that is what happens with you as well. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
My life is what it is, and I am basically a happy person.