Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Death…the last journey where all the answers are received…or not. "…To sleep, perchance to dream - ay there's the rub for in the sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause…" and whether you're some Shakespearean Danish prince (Hamlet) on a bad day, or a pretentious working engineer with delusions of grandeur, it a topic that runs into all of us at points in our lives.
Last weekend, coincident with a bit of a scary hospital stay for my father (he's ok), his brother, who'd lived a good long life, passed on - and that's the kind of thing that tends to get people all philosophical and thoughtful even if you don't spend a good chunk of your life that way anyway…that he had starved himself to death as he had concluded he had little more to offer, and that was the only way left open for him, is an invitation into the dying with dignity debate - but that may be pushing our internet code of practice stuff, so I'll restrain myself. It's enough said, that he left on his own terms, with as much dignity as he could arrange.
I've twice been diagnosed with terminal stuff that further testing ruled out, and the whole months in hospital following the car/legs thing, have given me the opportunities to think lots about that death thing, but I think almost everybody has been through events that segue into thoughts of "the end" at some point. It turns out that one of the most philosophical places on the planet is a recovery centre for people with serious skeletal injuries, as pretty much everybody there is recovering from something that almost killed them, and will impact the rest of their lives. Lots of soul searching and philosophical ramblings – at least amongst the longer term stayers.
The biggest thing I took out of there, after several long afternoons and philosophical discussions with others (that may have been influenced by various medications), was - I'm good with my life. If that had been the end, I'd left some great stories behind, and I was ok with that. The power and self-confidence that came from that realization is difficult to overstate - and the "what" drove that realization – the positive interactions (and a few note-worthy negative ones) with other people – makes "more of that" the obvious purpose that matters for the rest of the run - for me at least…mileage may vary. It's probably a lot easier and less painful to just take my word for it, rather than long chats after near death experiences, but people (very much including myself) seem to have to figure it all out for themselves, so whatev…
The Death thing is certainly part of the whole natural system, and pretty much regardless of your philosophical or religious position, it's the way it's supposed to work. There are potential medical advances that may very significantly postpone the end, and certainly improve the quality of life into the ending, but it's still the inevitable conclusion.
If you're lucky, you get to spend the conclusion slowly losing everything that makes you, you - as you drift away. "Old age ain't for sissies" - Bette Davis – (that's two attributed quotes in one blog - Probably a record!) If you aren't lucky, you remain locked in people's memory more vibrant and active, but end it all sooner, so it's a bit of a wash I figure.
Like most of Nature, it's brutal and ruthless - but for us "people" things, with our resistance to change after we've learned to do something - it's probably required for progress and/or change. I personally intend to morph into a higher form of life and continue on, but haven't made much progress on that, and this chrysalis/formation phase has some definite downsides…
On a bit of a side trip, I've never really understood "back to nature" as something to be desired. Nature is the most brutal, cutthroat, unfeeling thing in human experience. Survival of the fittest sucks, even for the fit. We human folk, with the whole higher reasoning and all that, have the capacity to move past Nature and make a "just" society that has goals beyond spreading your seed wider than anybody else. We just have to figure out how to keep love and beauty and joy and music and art and lose all those natural selection biases Nature has saddled us with. Hell, protecting threatened species is the least Natural thing going and is often the a goal expressed by people who want to "get back to nature". Screw Nature...Think instead.
As usual, I've dwelt on a bunch of ancillary stuff as build up to what I really wanted to say. It's the Memory part of living…that's a really big piece of this whole life/death thing. "How do you want to be remembered" has been part of inspirational communication since communication existed (for the pedantic, maybe not perfectly parallel with communications as a whole, but definitely recorded communication – and this is more philosophy than science, the literal has no place here…).
We only really live in memory – our own and for others. It takes time for the brain to process the sensory inputs it receives and make some sense of them, so we're responding to past signals by the time we recognize them. And, if memory is the only reality anyway, is anyone really dead- (outside of the whole potential rebirth/afterlife stuff) - as long as they are remembered? Some bit in all of "us" remain in the influences we've had while we've been here, and the memories formed thereof. If we make those influences good ones, we get to live forever in good memories – how cool is that!!. Now stop reading and go make some good memories for the people around you…