death

I was thinking today about death. It is one of those things I find myself contemplating. I have heard it said that we start reflecting on death more often when our own is drawing in but I doubt the validity of that on numerous levels, especially because it would suggest everything is already written and I’m not quite willing to accept that yet. I don’t worry about death, the idea of it coming for me is not necessarily something to fear. Of course the manner of ones death needs to be taken into consideration and despite the bravado; when death feels a long way away, we never know how we will react, if we have the time to react. In regards my own, I worry more about how it would affect others, I can imagine it would destroy my parents for example. Equally my only fear of death is that of my family and the reality that I will one day have to deal with that terrifies me. To know my dog, who is five now, has perhaps ten years to live is also a scary realisation.

It is this knowledge that the life of other’s is finite that helps me to understand the whole phenomena in a way that my own potential death doesn’t. I have already experienced the death of my grandparents, as well as the trauma of losing my childhood dog, but parents are another issue and I’ve invested such an emotional bond with my dog now that I don’t know how I would deal with the loss of her either. It is scary. It also makes you realise how temporary everything is. We’re all going to die one day. That is the only certainly in life we face and it’s the one thing that can give our own lives a true sense of value.

If you’ve ever been back somewhere that you had an intense and memorable experience; let’s say a place you worked, lived or travelled through, if this has happened a few times you start to notice the only commonality is that it’s not the place you remembered anymore. The faces are different, the energy has changed and it is not the same place, other people are now experiencing their own version, as will others after them. We can’t long for the return of moments from our past because they don’t exist anymore. Just like events in time, life is transient, it is an event, it is impermanent.

Your grandparents were your age once, they experienced what you experienced, they felt the same intense emotions and sensations and now it’s you turn and soon it’ll be someone else’s. It is undeniable that there is a deep sadness to this but there shouldn’t be and this is what I am trying to get beyond because supposedly it is beautiful too. Of course understanding how temporary life is allows you to enjoy it and embrace what comes, it helps us lead a full life. The knowledge of the inevitable though makes it feel pointless, if we’re going to die one day then what is the point. The nihilists recognised this, Camus did too and called it absurdism.

Like deaths sadness when felt deep down though, this feeling of pointlessness is surely something to be overcome. The ever present knowledge of death may be what makes the human condition but so does our innate ability to overcome adversity. While death is one thing we cannot overcome, the feeling of life’s intrinsic pointlessness is one we can. Death need not be sad, we can understand this end point, it’s getting there that seems the impossible part. Let’s just hope we have the time to do so but really does it matter one way or another if we don’t.

Last night I awoke at about four and was unable to sleep again. Today I’m a bit of a grumpy bastard. I just watched a video of a koala that was badly burnt in the bushfires that are still raging in Australia. It had burns all over it’s body and was screaming in pain, blood on the towel, no fur left. I feel like crying. I’m not normally someone who cries and I don’t say that in a proud way as it would probably be good for me if I did. They had to put the little fella down today because his burns were too bad. This is heartbreaking. Think with all the fires this year that raged through the Amazon, Africa, Siberia and currently Australia how many millions of animals have died. In a way this one little koala is more upsetting because we can relate to it. We can see his pain, we can hear his cries. The rest are nothing more than a number, and numbers don’t really mean anything.

Is it an issue of compassion or empathy. As a species do we lack this ability to connect with animals, and that includes humans by the way. There are numerous arguments that we have become desensitised to suffering and death but I’m not sure how true that is. Computer games and films do display graphic scenes but they’re not real and there is no great clamour to watch actual execution or snuff videos. There is no way to know how people dealt with death in the past but it was more common then, for humans at least. That made it a very real part of peoples lives, and this is something we don’t have anymore, not in the west anyway. I still continue to eat meat but less and it’s starting to feel more and more like a weird thing to do. I love my dog, I raised her from a two month old puppy and feel a connection to her in a way that I don’t have with any other creature, not more or less but it’s unique. When I see the koala suffering, I think of her and it’s that relating which is what connects us. Have you ever tried looking properly into someones eyes, they’re the gateway to their consciousness, nobody can tell me other animals don’t have that. We can put ourselves compassionately in the shoes of another human but with an animal whose consciousness we can’t comprehend we need to find other ways to relate.

When I carve a roast chicken sometimes I think it looks like my dog. I ignore the thoughts but it freaks me out none the less. I don’t want to eat chicken anymore. Many people the world over have pets and as I’ve never expressed this reaction to chicken before I’m unsure if others have it too. How do they disconnect and detach themselves from the fact they’re carving an animal when they have another one sitting curled up sleeping in the corner that they love so much. Is it hypocritical, more behaving unconsciously I imagine. Perhaps people just don’t think like that, they just carve the chicken and see it for the chicken, not what it represents. It does represent something though, it represents existence. Until we start to understand this all it does is put in jeopardy all existence, ourselves included.

Tag: death

Death’s Eternal March