Death, The Void, and the Bit of Life that Preceeds It
Its odd how easy it is to list the deaths in chronological order, they add up little by little... one classmate's dad from disease, another classmate's sister and mom in a car accident, a teacher from lung cancer, another teacher from cancer, a best friend from an accident in the military, a classmate from a bad choice when driving a car, another classmate from a bad choice by the other driver, a grandfather from an inadequately tested and yet FDA approved drug, and Grandma. And those are just the ones that stick out in my mind most.
About a week ago, I awoke in the middle of the night, wide awake, staring into the void, feeling the bleak nothingness that waited just beyond my own death. How nice it would be to have faith. I can understand why people believe in something beyond death... without that belief, it could be difficult to understand the reason to live. Because how can a person live without having hope about existence following death... So I laid there, alone, in the dark, and stared into the void for a while... My heart pounded in my chest from the fear of non-existence.
I think it is almost worse for a person who can see it coming and who don't have time to mentally prepare. Honestly, I'm not sure I believe that I will every be ready for death. But, for those that have faith, it seems like preparation can actually occur. I felt a great shock when I realized how unprepared my Grandfather was. He desperately wanted to live. He was not at all pleased that he had been doing okay, and then suddenly he was deteriorating and his body was doing odd things. (Little did he know, that new FDA approved drug killed him in less than a week.) He was clearly afraid, and that worried me, because he was a regular church go-er. I had hoped that he had faith, something to comfort him at his death-bed.
I myself faced death in a more real way when I was in a serious car accident. Being a passenger in a car that was cruising along the freeway at 70 mph... well, when that car hit a patch of ice and then fishtailed out of control... yes, that was a bit surprising, but once the car slid off the road sideways into the ditch, and the tires bit into the gravel-flying, sending me smashing into the earth as the car rolled around and around... well, the entire accident probably latest about 20 seconds, but I can describe the entire think in hyper-real detail at length... It was a shock of reality that my life had ended... I think the precise thought was "Gee, this is the end, eh... never imagined it like this... I guess I'll find out if I'm wrong about death..."
Much to my own surprise, I lived. Soon after, I began thinking back on my life and wondering what my legacy was... Hmm... no great accomplishments and really nothing set in motion that promises to amount to anything... Depressing. I had better DO something... I do have this irrational belief that, being human, I could be wrong about death. Logic could be wrong. Common sense could be wrong. I know I've been wrong about things. Perhaps I'll luck out and be wrong about death. In which case, and really in any case, I prefer to do something to make the world better... Hmm, what to do.
And since then, I've been getting involved to a much greater degree than I think I ever imagined, but still not to the degree that I would like. I almost feel desperate to make a positive mark on the world, even if that positive mark won't be associated with me... I imagine someone walking in a beautiful natural wilderness and admiring the beauty... myself having done something to have created or preserved that wilderness.
I suppose I go astray a bit. Yes, Grandma's death left also left me with quite a bit of stuff to mull over... stuff that comes into my head on a surprising regular basis. One vivid memory is the sadness in her eyes when relating how depressing it was to cross people off in her address book. She had some pages where most of the people were crossed off. I would ask her if she was still playing cards regularly, and she would respond that they had all died... and that it was very depressing to see all your friends die. I imagine that if we are "lucky enough" to live to old age, we may find the same experience haunting us.
So, I agree with you. My patience isn't the same as it once was. When I am in a meeting and someone says, "this may take a while to get figured out" and I know that its simply some stall tactic, I feel anger rising. When I see people abusing the world and being blind to it, I feel angry. When I think of that *person* in the White House and all the lies and bad choices that have come out of his lips, I rage inside. And I try my best to take all that anger and frustration and change it into action. Action to make the future a better place, for not just for myself, but my nieces and nephews, and your cute little children, and the future children of our family, and my students, and their future children, and all the children of the world... What are we leaving them?
Ultimately, this drives my quest to design or discover a value system that will be able to take humanity AND the planet into the future. Our current hodge-podge of religion and self-indulgence isn't cutting it. It's not a matter of believing in the supernatural or not... It's a matter of understanding how our choices impact the world and designing an understandable system for making decisions that ensures that we do the right thing. Then, after the system is devised, the big question is, how to share it and make help it to grow and spread. Perhaps that question is why I don't sleep so well anymore.
About a week ago, I awoke in the middle of the night, wide awake, staring into the void, feeling the bleak nothingness that waited just beyond my own death. How nice it would be to have faith. I can understand why people believe in something beyond death... without that belief, it could be difficult to understand the reason to live. Because how can a person live without having hope about existence following death... So I laid there, alone, in the dark, and stared into the void for a while... My heart pounded in my chest from the fear of non-existence.
I think it is almost worse for a person who can see it coming and who don't have time to mentally prepare. Honestly, I'm not sure I believe that I will every be ready for death. But, for those that have faith, it seems like preparation can actually occur. I felt a great shock when I realized how unprepared my Grandfather was. He desperately wanted to live. He was not at all pleased that he had been doing okay, and then suddenly he was deteriorating and his body was doing odd things. (Little did he know, that new FDA approved drug killed him in less than a week.) He was clearly afraid, and that worried me, because he was a regular church go-er. I had hoped that he had faith, something to comfort him at his death-bed.
I myself faced death in a more real way when I was in a serious car accident. Being a passenger in a car that was cruising along the freeway at 70 mph... well, when that car hit a patch of ice and then fishtailed out of control... yes, that was a bit surprising, but once the car slid off the road sideways into the ditch, and the tires bit into the gravel-flying, sending me smashing into the earth as the car rolled around and around... well, the entire accident probably latest about 20 seconds, but I can describe the entire think in hyper-real detail at length... It was a shock of reality that my life had ended... I think the precise thought was "Gee, this is the end, eh... never imagined it like this... I guess I'll find out if I'm wrong about death..."
Much to my own surprise, I lived. Soon after, I began thinking back on my life and wondering what my legacy was... Hmm... no great accomplishments and really nothing set in motion that promises to amount to anything... Depressing. I had better DO something... I do have this irrational belief that, being human, I could be wrong about death. Logic could be wrong. Common sense could be wrong. I know I've been wrong about things. Perhaps I'll luck out and be wrong about death. In which case, and really in any case, I prefer to do something to make the world better... Hmm, what to do.
And since then, I've been getting involved to a much greater degree than I think I ever imagined, but still not to the degree that I would like. I almost feel desperate to make a positive mark on the world, even if that positive mark won't be associated with me... I imagine someone walking in a beautiful natural wilderness and admiring the beauty... myself having done something to have created or preserved that wilderness.
I suppose I go astray a bit. Yes, Grandma's death left also left me with quite a bit of stuff to mull over... stuff that comes into my head on a surprising regular basis. One vivid memory is the sadness in her eyes when relating how depressing it was to cross people off in her address book. She had some pages where most of the people were crossed off. I would ask her if she was still playing cards regularly, and she would respond that they had all died... and that it was very depressing to see all your friends die. I imagine that if we are "lucky enough" to live to old age, we may find the same experience haunting us.
So, I agree with you. My patience isn't the same as it once was. When I am in a meeting and someone says, "this may take a while to get figured out" and I know that its simply some stall tactic, I feel anger rising. When I see people abusing the world and being blind to it, I feel angry. When I think of that *person* in the White House and all the lies and bad choices that have come out of his lips, I rage inside. And I try my best to take all that anger and frustration and change it into action. Action to make the future a better place, for not just for myself, but my nieces and nephews, and your cute little children, and the future children of our family, and my students, and their future children, and all the children of the world... What are we leaving them?
Ultimately, this drives my quest to design or discover a value system that will be able to take humanity AND the planet into the future. Our current hodge-podge of religion and self-indulgence isn't cutting it. It's not a matter of believing in the supernatural or not... It's a matter of understanding how our choices impact the world and designing an understandable system for making decisions that ensures that we do the right thing. Then, after the system is devised, the big question is, how to share it and make help it to grow and spread. Perhaps that question is why I don't sleep so well anymore.