Death(14)

Dave , your question caused me to write about this sooner than I intended ,
but I’ll try to give a summary of what I hope to write in more details later.
Unfortunately the common look to death is what you said, that death is a
sad and unwelcome event and dealing with it causes pain and depression.
Refusing to acknowledge death may bring temporary comfort, but sooner
or later imminence of it, if suppressed throughout our lives, can begin to
undermine the joy we might otherwise enjoy and replace it with misery. It
can happen in all of us by growing old and in many of us by experiencing
a hard illness. And though it happens once for us, seeing our friends and
family and other people going through it makes it an issue that is happening
hundreds of times in one’s life.
There are different reasons that this view prevails, but being common doesn’t
mean that this is the correct look to the matter. Popular arts turn death into
an unreality by their life-affirming attitude. As Nancy Krum says : “ Death,
particularly of a major character is almost unheard of in the daily[comic]
strips-an art form with an implicit promise of amusement.” It’s a very important
point Iman has said in his comment, but I want to go one step further and
say that not only we should cope the fear of it, but we should turn it to a
pleasing one. You can feel with what degree of joy Rumi and Kahlil Gibran
were anticipating it in their lives when you read the quotes I posted under
numbers 5 and 13 of these series.And how can it be a depressing issue if we
are supposed to spend each day as it is our last day and live them happily
while having the thought of this impending death with us all the time. On the
other hand, I don’t agree with Albert Camus in Iman’s last post. He didn’t believe
in any kind of ulterior meaning in life, but this is not the reason that I disagree
with him here, rather I think philosophy cannot decide for or has any effect on
someone’s suicide.
(posted by Farid)
Posted:Thursday, May 29, 2003 |