Beware: Philosophal Entry Dead Ahead
I don't think I've done a full-blown philosophy journal here yet. So, if you read this, good luck wandering through my fragmented musings. This particular topic is one I hadn't thought about in a long time. Emotionally it bothered me in grade school. In high school, I could look back and see where I got these ideas and why they bothered me. Seeing them from the outside, and with a little more maturity, I didn't buy into them so much anymore. Still, I think there is some nagging impulse, somewhere in my subconscious, that wants to see things in the old, scary, simplistic way. What is this topic, you ask? Well, it has to do with fate and death.
What brought this subject up for me recently was the play we performed. At the end of the play, a character dies. The literal reason for his death is never given, but the philosophical reason given by a grieving friend is that his life had recently reached completion (through self-acceptance and inner peace) and, therefore, it was an appropriate time for him to die. When applied to my own life, and the life of my friends, I find this concept disturbing.
To give further background as to why this bothered me so much, I should probably explain something that I was taught in grade school. My religion teacher told us that each life has a specific purpose, a role in the scheme of things which you were supposed to fill at some specific time and place. That there might be just one thing in "God's Plan" that you were destined to do. God's ways being as mysterious as they supposedly are, you might never know what it was you did, or when you've completed your "destiny," but something will happen and you will be responsible for taking the correct action. I think she even emphasized the fact that no one knows when they are going to die. That it could happen tomorrow, or even later that afternoon, for any of us. So we'd better be aware of what we're doing now, to be good at all times, because you never know when you might need to fulfill your purpose, and you never know when you might die. (The more I think about it, the more amazed I am that I came out of that teacher's class with a shred of sanity.)
I also remember someone asking her, "What if you don't fulfill your fate? What if you mess up?" To which I believe she responded something like, "Then you'll have another fate in your future, where you'll have another chance to be a part of God's Plan." She made it sound like you could delay death indefinitely if you never fulfilled your fate. If you never reach completion, then there's more yet you must do. What I heard was: 'Beware of completion. Beware of total success, total bliss, total goodness.' Yet, at the same time, she stressed the importance of being good at all times, of choosing to fulfill the fates God has in store for us. Can we say, strongly conflicting messages? She made it sound like you do whatever it is you're "supposed" to do, and then you are no longer needed. I think it made me dread the "perfect day" when I was young. Because hey, the day when everything goes right, when life works perfectly, that's the day your life is complete and you're due back "home," right? It almost gets you simultaneously hoping for and fearing a kink in any happiness.
So, let's try combining the three points: 1. When your life is complete, you can die. 2. Your purpose in life could be completed by a single action of goodness. 3. You have a responsibility to be good and to fulfull your fate. ... Anybody else get the impression their trying to turn us into a class of martyrs? Either that, or they really really wanted to foster an atmosphere of both compliance and paranoia. There are other things we were taught which would also lean us in the dramatically self-sacrificing direction. But I'll stop short of listing more of those here. (Not that self-sacrifice is bad, but I think the strength by which this message was conveyed to kids had the potential to do a lot more harm than good.)
What if you embrace the idea that your purpose in life is to become successful in some venture? Isn't this necessarily a very anti-motivational philosophy? How can you enjoy wholly blissful success if you expect annihilation to follow? How can you work towards your dreams if reaching them means you become expendable?
Compared with the idea of your life being "completed" in a single action, the idea proposed by the play mentioned above is equally scary. Accepting who you are and finding inner peace means your life is complete and you might as well move on to the afterlife? For those of us who'd like to live past their 20s, that sounds like a motivation to keep a neurosis or two handy in your back pocket.
My perceptions of life, death, fate and psychology are hardly so simple any more. I don't know exactly how to define what fate I believe in. I'm not sure that I believe in fate at all. But there are days when I think this old paranoia is lurking behind some of the behavior I find most frustrating about myself. And that annoys the hell out of me, because I know better.
Regardless, it overtly bothers me to hear someone say that a person died because their life was complete, that their "mission" in life was accomplished, that their fate was satisfied.
I don't expect my life to ever be complete, or my purpose to be accomplished. If there is ever a freak accident and my death is a result, you can be guarenteed right now that my life was not "complete" by any definition I attribute to the word. I don't care what I said or did or felt the week before, or what kind of revelation I had about myself, the world, or the grandiose scheme of life. There are two states in which I will feel like my life is complete when I die, and only two: 1. Living long into old age, remembering a life filled with love, pain, pleasure, work, fun, learning, overcoming fears, standing up for beliefs, fighting for a better world, and generally experiencing whatever I can out of life. 2. Dying for a cause which I deem important enough to sacrifice my life, or for the protection of others.
Now, I know this philosophy only really crops up when a loved one has died young. Parents and friends console themlselves with the notion that it was all part of God's plan, and that their beloved's life was as complete as it ever could have been, that their time among the living was not arbitrarily cut short. I can understand that desire, and may very well find myself hypocritically embracing that idea the first time someone truly close to me dies young.
But philosophy like this is not a theory of situational truths. Someone's life does not become complete after they are dead just because their loved ones prefer to think of them that way. If there is any validity to the idea that a completed fate sends you packing your spiritual bags for "home," then there are implications for us still-breathing folks in our lives now.
Okay, I've rambled on about this enough. Onto a very brief conclusion:
Saying it was someone's "time" to die, okay. Saying everyone's life has a "purpose," fine. But claiming that a person's decease was due because their life having recently become "complete" is scary, sadistic, anti-motivational, and joy-tainting.
What brought this subject up for me recently was the play we performed. At the end of the play, a character dies. The literal reason for his death is never given, but the philosophical reason given by a grieving friend is that his life had recently reached completion (through self-acceptance and inner peace) and, therefore, it was an appropriate time for him to die. When applied to my own life, and the life of my friends, I find this concept disturbing.
To give further background as to why this bothered me so much, I should probably explain something that I was taught in grade school. My religion teacher told us that each life has a specific purpose, a role in the scheme of things which you were supposed to fill at some specific time and place. That there might be just one thing in "God's Plan" that you were destined to do. God's ways being as mysterious as they supposedly are, you might never know what it was you did, or when you've completed your "destiny," but something will happen and you will be responsible for taking the correct action. I think she even emphasized the fact that no one knows when they are going to die. That it could happen tomorrow, or even later that afternoon, for any of us. So we'd better be aware of what we're doing now, to be good at all times, because you never know when you might need to fulfill your purpose, and you never know when you might die. (The more I think about it, the more amazed I am that I came out of that teacher's class with a shred of sanity.)
I also remember someone asking her, "What if you don't fulfill your fate? What if you mess up?" To which I believe she responded something like, "Then you'll have another fate in your future, where you'll have another chance to be a part of God's Plan." She made it sound like you could delay death indefinitely if you never fulfilled your fate. If you never reach completion, then there's more yet you must do. What I heard was: 'Beware of completion. Beware of total success, total bliss, total goodness.' Yet, at the same time, she stressed the importance of being good at all times, of choosing to fulfill the fates God has in store for us. Can we say, strongly conflicting messages? She made it sound like you do whatever it is you're "supposed" to do, and then you are no longer needed. I think it made me dread the "perfect day" when I was young. Because hey, the day when everything goes right, when life works perfectly, that's the day your life is complete and you're due back "home," right? It almost gets you simultaneously hoping for and fearing a kink in any happiness.
So, let's try combining the three points: 1. When your life is complete, you can die. 2. Your purpose in life could be completed by a single action of goodness. 3. You have a responsibility to be good and to fulfull your fate. ... Anybody else get the impression their trying to turn us into a class of martyrs? Either that, or they really really wanted to foster an atmosphere of both compliance and paranoia. There are other things we were taught which would also lean us in the dramatically self-sacrificing direction. But I'll stop short of listing more of those here. (Not that self-sacrifice is bad, but I think the strength by which this message was conveyed to kids had the potential to do a lot more harm than good.)
What if you embrace the idea that your purpose in life is to become successful in some venture? Isn't this necessarily a very anti-motivational philosophy? How can you enjoy wholly blissful success if you expect annihilation to follow? How can you work towards your dreams if reaching them means you become expendable?
Compared with the idea of your life being "completed" in a single action, the idea proposed by the play mentioned above is equally scary. Accepting who you are and finding inner peace means your life is complete and you might as well move on to the afterlife? For those of us who'd like to live past their 20s, that sounds like a motivation to keep a neurosis or two handy in your back pocket.
My perceptions of life, death, fate and psychology are hardly so simple any more. I don't know exactly how to define what fate I believe in. I'm not sure that I believe in fate at all. But there are days when I think this old paranoia is lurking behind some of the behavior I find most frustrating about myself. And that annoys the hell out of me, because I know better.
Regardless, it overtly bothers me to hear someone say that a person died because their life was complete, that their "mission" in life was accomplished, that their fate was satisfied.
I don't expect my life to ever be complete, or my purpose to be accomplished. If there is ever a freak accident and my death is a result, you can be guarenteed right now that my life was not "complete" by any definition I attribute to the word. I don't care what I said or did or felt the week before, or what kind of revelation I had about myself, the world, or the grandiose scheme of life. There are two states in which I will feel like my life is complete when I die, and only two: 1. Living long into old age, remembering a life filled with love, pain, pleasure, work, fun, learning, overcoming fears, standing up for beliefs, fighting for a better world, and generally experiencing whatever I can out of life. 2. Dying for a cause which I deem important enough to sacrifice my life, or for the protection of others.
Now, I know this philosophy only really crops up when a loved one has died young. Parents and friends console themlselves with the notion that it was all part of God's plan, and that their beloved's life was as complete as it ever could have been, that their time among the living was not arbitrarily cut short. I can understand that desire, and may very well find myself hypocritically embracing that idea the first time someone truly close to me dies young.
But philosophy like this is not a theory of situational truths. Someone's life does not become complete after they are dead just because their loved ones prefer to think of them that way. If there is any validity to the idea that a completed fate sends you packing your spiritual bags for "home," then there are implications for us still-breathing folks in our lives now.
Okay, I've rambled on about this enough. Onto a very brief conclusion:
Saying it was someone's "time" to die, okay. Saying everyone's life has a "purpose," fine. But claiming that a person's decease was due because their life having recently become "complete" is scary, sadistic, anti-motivational, and joy-tainting.