You can reconsider when you actually experience the feeling of knowing for sure you're going to die. Theoretical perspective will not dig you into that dark place.
Death & Dying
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You can reconsider when you actually experience the feeling of knowing for sure you're going to die. Theoretical perspective will not dig you into that dark place.
For some people there seems to be a lot of discomfort with fear and the unknown. Like it is not OK to be be afraid and fear must be avoided rather than accepted as a healthy part of life, and that the unknown has a menacing aspect, maybe a bit like a horror film, rather than being simply something that is not yet known.
(Please understand I am not attempting to criticise or change you or you beliefs in any way.)
I agree that it is good to say goodbye, but death in sleep is such a good way to go - no fear, no gradual humiliating loss of faculties, and probably very little pain. When someone says goodbye, they're just going to tell you how much they love you and wish they could always be with you, I think. The most shocking thing to deal with whether they say goodbye or not is the loss of the person, not able to talk to them or be with them anymore.
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I agree. It seems to be a socially taboo topic. And yes, prevention is good, as well as dealing with grief, but, like you said, those aspects of death and dying don't encompass the totality of the subject.
I guess so. But anyway I don’t know whether it would be the same in an afterlife, memory might become eternal, there's no way of knowing. Maybe the notion of endless memory is the thing I find most unpleasant. But I think it's partly also the idea of unified self or unified consciousness just going on and on forever. I really don't identify with that idea as something desirable.
No, it's OK, I can consider it now. I have been close enough to death in my life that yeah, it's not theoretical for me, I can understand what it means for me. I do understand that people tend to get very anxious when approaching death. But I think a person who is in the midst of living and wants to go insane before death must probably have an intense fear of death. I think probably a lot of people feel very fearful about it when they're still distant from it.
From the standpoint of being a person left on the planet, I would like the opportunity to say goodbye. From the perspective of the person leaving the planet, well, I would also like the opportunity to say goodbye. But that's just me.
I was reading a very interesting article about when people die. It implied that people left when they had finished everything they had to do in this particular life. Maybe the folks who linger have more to do in their life, and the ones who leave us too early did what they came here to do in a short amount of time. Children die. It's hard to wrap your head around that.
I was reading a very interesting article about when people die. It implied that people left when they had finished everything they had to do in this particular life. Maybe the folks who linger have more to do in their life, and the ones who leave us too early did what they came here to do in a short amount of time. Children die. It's hard to wrap your head around that.
How long were you conscious with the thought that you were sure you were going to die?
I choose to believe that fate is arbitrary and that the most important thing is to try to make the most of time while knowing it is finite.
Sometimes it seems like the death is made more important than the life. Like "they died!" rather than that "they were alive!"
I'm sorry if you don't accept the truthfulness or validity of the pitch black depths of my own life experiences, but I'm not willing to waste time debating that stuff, and I don't see it as being particularly relevant to the discussion anyway.
I like the idea of a celebration of a persons life as opposed to a funeral. I recently saw a movie about a woman who was dying and she planned her own funeral, she said, "I'm going to put the FUN back in funeral". She threw a party that was a wonderful celebration of her life. It was for the people she was leaving behind.
What I'm getting at is there's a difference between someone waiting to die, and someone who almost died.
It's your choice to dismiss people's fear in dying, but don't argue with me about that. Lie to your own ego of being above fear.
In an open discussion about death and dying, I made a comment that I don't really understand why people seem to be so intensely fearful about dying in response to a story about a person who would rather become insane than knowingly face their own mortality. Then suddenly, I was instructed and questioned on my own personal experiences with death, and then informed that I am being dismissive of the fear of others and lying to my own ego. It seems to me that I am a very ignorant and presumptuous and arrogant sort of person. I seem to have become very confused, I can't follow all of these complex threads of discussion. I need to take a headache pill and have a lie down, this is all a little bit too much.
I am simply trying to pin-down one point: You haven't waited for death in a way that would instill this fear you don't understand. I am being persistant because I suspect your comment about not understanding other people's fear, was an egotistical claim, or one that implied a spiritual or rational superiority. Whether that was true, I wanted to propose their point of view which you are deliberately dismissing.
While I do dislike how you think, my replies are more than both of us. It's not all about you. It's about a principle.
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For the time being I am completely satisfied that you have been able to share those suppositions you have made or suspicions you have formulated with regard to my own personal experiences, the thoughts that I have had about them, and on any other possible contents of my mind on which you have remarked.
In the mean time, you are avoiding my questions to avoid resolving whether I was right. Next time I wont explain my thought process as a means to explain my reasoning for asking questions you don't want to answer.
I am not avoiding your questions, and in fact, I have gone out of my way to answer those questions. At this point I am now trying to explain to you that it appears to me that there is no possible way for me to answer your questions to your satisfaction. Still, I can't work out why I should be obligated to answer your questions, since they are to do with your own personal opinions on my own experience of life and my thoughts about those things; I can't figure out why I should be required to answer to you on those subjects. Also, I have previously attempted to explain to you, that being "right" is not a paradigm that it interests me to work with to any extent at all. But since we are talking about it, I am happy for you to be "right" on this occasion, and on any other occasion that we speak, since I lack the ability to "prove" you "wrong", or even to make my voice heard in any way about my own experiences of my life and my own thoughts on those experiences. If you are "right", I can't figure out why you would need my validation on that. If I were "wrong", would you accept that I would be capable of validating that you were "right"?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on my experiences and the things that might be going through my head. I won't be responding to any further remarks you may make on these matters, since I hope that you are happy in the knowledge that you are right, but also because we seem to have deviated greatly from the topic of the thread.
It may sound weird, but I think I want a traumatic death - like getting eaten by a shark, or kidnapped and killed. Perhaps it's because I want to die still wanting to live, but having a brief, intense time to let go in the face of inevitability. I certainly don't want a medicated, drawn-out death. Nevertheless, perhaps a long death would build some character?
I agree. I want my death to have meaning. I'm hopeful.