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Speaking of death (See Zadie Smith's "The American Exception" and "We didn't have death")...
Religion scholar Elaine Pagels in her memoir Why Religion? attributes a version of this statement to Mr. Twain, but I've also seen it credited to William Saroyan:"Everybody has to die, but I always thought in my case they'd make an exception."
I'll bet Woody Allen said it too, along with "I don't want to live on in an afterlife, I want to live on in my apartment."
Twain did say that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated, and “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” And "I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."
Twain made many other, more somber statements on the subject. “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Pagels had to deal with a double shot of unbearable grief, losing her young son one year and her husband, in a brutal hiking accident, the next. She says something I think Ruse, Hagglund, and several of the Neuroexistentialism contributors would agree with:
“What is clear is that meaning may not be something we find. We found no meaning in our son's death, or in the deaths of countless others. The most we could hope was that we might be able to create meaning.”
It always has puzzles me people fear the eminent threat of life that is death. Every living organism meets the same fate and that won't change for quite some time. I remember as a child fearing the concept of death but soon realizing that I must cherish and enjoy the life that I'm living now. Lastly, I think it is rather harsh to state that death has no meaning. That fits along the thinking that there is no meaning at all to anything in mankind which is not true to me. Death is the end of life on Earth but the beginning of a new life elsewhere. Where that new life is something I don't have the answer to.
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"Death is the end of life on Earth but the beginning of a new life elsewhere." Many of us don't believe this, but do still find life precious and meaningful. We even think it's a condition of finding life precious and meaningful to NOT expect "a new life elsewhere." And, we think it's crucial that the life we've loved will continue for others, especially those we've loved, right here on planet earth. See Samuel Scheffler...
DeleteSamuel Scheffler, "The Importance of the Afterlife" (he means the afterlife on Earth, for those who survive us)- https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/the-importance-of-the-afterlife-seriously/?searchResultPosition=1
DeleteDeath can be a hard concept to process. However I agree with enjoying life to the fullest and realizing that eventually you will die. It is the inevitable truth.
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Accepting death is something we all have to endure. If we send an entire lifetime worrying about death would be a waste of a life.
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ReplyDeleteDeath is the only thing promised to all that have lived. No matter the scale of the entity from a single cell to a star all things die and decay. And in my opinion if there were no death then life itself would be pointless, as it would have far less meaning.
I still remember what I was doing when it really hit me as a child growing up that death is inevitable, and regardless of religion, there really truly is no way of knowing what’s to come next. Despite this, I find comfort in what I believe in to the extent that I can live my life without fear of death constantly. It also pushes me to live life to the fullest, or at least as best I can
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