Tuesday, September 13, 2011
That One Death Story
I know the actual title, but it's fun to be course sometimes... it's my blog so lay off! (None of this counts for my 250 words). On Natural Death by Lewis Thomas, the New England educated neurologist, peeked my interest as I had just recently been thinking about the notion of death in the eternal perspective. (I'm not dark or am attracted to macabre settings and death so don't worry) Anyway, I began to realize just how ridiculous our society's fear of death is when taken into the scope of the gospel. Obviously we have a natural will to survive and carry out our mission here on Earth, if we didn't have this will then we would be doing irrational and dangerous acts that could potentially maim or kill us at any moment (oh wait, some of us do that regularly). In all seriousness, we as humans aren't waiting in lines at the mortuary, waiting for our moment to eventually die and also aren't committing suicide as soon as we are forced to endure something particularly nasty... like watching Mama Mia (though many people actually had to be talked down shortly after opening credits) side note: jk for all those who believe I am serious about this movie and its effects on suicidal thoughts, no offense implied. Anyway, I believe our fear of death is a little overblown at times and may be due to the increasing belief in... nothing. What I mean by this is that many members of society have chosen to believe in uncertainty after death purely for the sake of removing the concept of agency from their lives. They choose the path of agency without consequence, which then allows these unfortunate people to feel as though they can live their lives exactly how they please without eternal repercussion. However, what I implied from this man of science and reasoning is that death was made to be a natural part of life, insomuch that all living creatures' bodies know exactly how to die the right way when their time comes. I realize not all death is painless; there are many diseases that take their victims slowly and painfully, but nevertheless, we are naturally equipped with the knowledge of how to die. This concept brings me back to a story I read on how people should have the right to die over being kept alive and enduring further pain by means of modern medicine. A man in the story was constantly being kept alive through medicine and repeated resuscitations, even though he had pleaded to exercise his natural right to die. Eventually a nurse chose to allow the man to die and not exert further effort towards keeping his mortal body alive. Although modern medicine is a wonderful achievement of man and should be used in order to prolong life; there are some situations in which I feel like we might be holding an individual back from progressing to his next estate and exercising his natural ability to die painlessly. That is what I believe the author is trying to convey about death; that at the appointed time, nature will tell us how we are supposed to die with the least pain. This fact shows to me that we as framers of this mortal world understood the benefit of pain as an avoidance measure, but likewise knew that we will all would desire death and return to claim our estate. With this knowledge, we created a world that allowed for a painless death that would make the cycle of life and death a little more humane.
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Death is a natural thing. It is inevitable, at least for us. I think the strong basis in our society that fears death, is due to the falling number of religious people in society.As we remove religion from our understanding of the world, life seems to end at death. That's it. Game over. End of line. Yet, nearly all the remaining religious people are not deathly afriad of death. They know it will come, but they know that there is something better, out there, beyond their current comprehension. That is what helps most people cope with death. Now, I've never seen Momma Mia, so I don't truly grasp it's suicidal implications, but I find that as most people get closer to death, they feel more comfortable with it. I think it is similar to relationships,(I say think because I am an engineer, with near total social ineptitude, proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmYDgncMhXw&feature=youtube_gdata_player). As relationships get closer, we can become more comfortable with the other person even if the relationship started out as fear of the other. Death is something to embrace and deal with, not fear and avoid at all costs. The police officer from your story understood that, and so he asked the nurse not to be resuscitated. He was on speaking terms with death, ready to make the next step. Modern science is great, but I agree that there bead to be some set limits, on prolonging the inevitable, so people don't live in misery at the crossroads of life and death. Crossing back and forth continually thanks to the bungee cord of modern science. There is a time to cut that bungee cord and allow life to progress into the next stages of our life.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the reasons that people are so scared of death is that they are scared of change. Sometimes people are ready for change, but sometimes they aren't. They can also be scared of loss. They are scared to lose the people/things that they have, and to them, death represents a complete loss. My sophomore year, I spent a lot of time with my sister's ballroom team. That April, one of the girls on the team and her sister died in a car wreck. The team drew much closer together and became more protective of each other, especially when they were traveling. They weren't necessarily scared of dying, but they were afraid of losing another friend. And it doesn't have to be a permanent loss. We understood that Alexis wasn't gone forever, but she was gone for the moment, and it's kind of scary to think of being separated from everyone and everything that is familiar, even if it is only temporary.
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