Death

[darkwall]

So, you're at one of those silent disco events and it's all going wonderfully. Suddenly, your iPod falls to the ground, and as you reach to pick it up, you hear nothing but the sound of feet, like a broken march, and a few people singing along to their favourite songs. You feel very isolated from it all - the eerie sounds of people singing different songs badly and feet tramping on the ground - and you want to replace your earphones but it wouldn't feel right. For now that the reality of the situation - because reality is after all what is happening among other people - filters through, you don't want to plug yourself back into your dream-music.

The experience of recollecting the fact of your own death is for me like this experience. Your headphones fall out of your ears, and you are confronted with silence, the universe, even the fact of your own body. We all aspire to be as unaware as the singing people, at least until the headphones come out; but mine, these days, hang permanently around my neck: my thoughts are destroying me. But wait! There in the crowd there is a girl, moving without headphones, dancing to the sounds of other people dancing to whatever it is that’s inside their heads.

She has accepted her death on a meaningful level: she doesn’t need music, and she has become existentially free. I would join her, if I could. But the knowledge of my death paralyses me: it is cruel that animals, whose deaths were like blood-cells being replaced after a cycle, should have reached this level of sentiency. You and I will die: very, very soon. The chemistry of our bodies will make it appear to us that we have lived a long time, but we will have lived no time at all.

We could cling to each other in the knowledge that everything else is meaningless. We could try to make something brilliant from our lives. But we are not death-dancers; we lack the strength, and are neutered by the fact that both awareness and obliviousness towards death produce different states of apathy. In an hour, being human, we will have forgotten what it was like without the headphones, and this produces a sort of rage within us, like that of a child knowing that soon one will forgive one's parents for punishing us.

This anger sustains me longer than probably most people, as you can tell from my entries, but it is not enough. I don't want to live as I live, sub-existing, hypnotising myself through routine into forgetting the fact that I am not who I want to be, going from involved to detached so fast that I can't take either seriously. I want to be like the death-dancer, all knowing and supreme, moving without dreams.

 

[evanescencefan91]

very beuatiful and clear writing buddah, i have never thought about death as one such expeirance, but i will keep this idea in my mind though

what to do about death, well we don't know, we know what to do about life, but death, is something that can't really be observed, i mean we can see a person dying, or see a body, but to see it from there vantage point and to understand it fully, or even to try and study death is futile , this barrier between life and death baffles us.

but i assume very few of us or any have had a near death experiance, or have close to dying.

when i was younger like really litle, i was terrified of dyying, and all they could try to say to me, was i wasn't going to die for a long long time, but that didn't help becuase it didn't matter how far from now, i 'm still gonna die some day,

but in reality unless i have a serious clumsy and fatal accident i doubt i will die for many a decade


i donna at this point i've kinda accepted it, there's not much i can do about it,
tehe

my grandpa told me, we're just here in life to fart around and don't let anybody try to tell you any differnt,

i guess for now my plans ( i don't really feel much like looking much farther ahead anymore)

finish all my studies try to do well in school, save some money so one day i can buy a place of my own and support myself,

and play videogames take some naps, play the guitar and go bike ridding, and all those things i like to do, with the time i have in between that important stuff,

well those are my current feelings of the subject

i do love what you wrote, i hope you can find solace somehow



*hugs*

 

[darkwall]

I appreciate the hug, and the sympathy.

But isn't what you and I are doing exactly "hypnotising [ourselves] through routine". No, no, life is good, we are doing studies, we are making friends, we sleep and watch TV. But if we could really appreciate what death means, and how short life really is, then we'd spend every day having amazing new experiences and never stop for a second.

If you don't believe me as to how short life is, ask an old person. I did volunteer work in an old person's home, and I heard from one guy how time quickly goes. You're, what, 18 based on your username, which means that a year for you is an 18th of your whole life, whereas for someone aged 80 a year has become a tiny fraction.

So they literally feel their lives speed up towards the end, and that's why they start losing themselves in rituals like bingo - because they're all terrified of death. And their losing themselves in bingo is an exaggerated version of what you and I have in our lives even at this age. I believe that under many things lies a basic fear, even in Christians, because if they weren't afraid of death they wouldn't bother taking medicine. What I am saying is that what makes you get blind drunk at 18 is the same thing that makes you do crosswords at 80. Only the death-dancers, these rare people who don't need distractions from the inevitable, can find true meaning in their lives.

 

[PoisonFlowers]

"but i assume very few of us or any have had a near death experiance, or have close to dying."

I've had something similar in a way. Maybe it'll sound laughable to you, but it had a big effect on me. It was at a time when death was on my mind quite a lot. I had a dream that I was to be executed. My crime was practically nothing, but in the country I was in, it was an offense that fully qualified me to a bullet in the back of my head.

I had a few days left. I felt absolutely terrified. I could see death right in front of me. It was nothingness. I felt how completely meaningless my life had been. How totally small and insignificant things are. I busied myself with writing to friends and families. Preparing for death. What else could I do? It really made me feel sick. The feeling you get just before you drop down in a rollercoaster. Only this time, I knew that there would be no turing back. There was no sense of peace, only numbness and nausea.

It was weird when my turn came. I'd seen these other people get shot and it was strange because I knew that afterwards, I would be gone and the whole world would carry on. I was insignificant. Nothing I had done or wanted to do would matter anymore. All those meaningless plans and feelings - gone. No more illusions.

When I woke up, I felt as though I had a new appreciation for the finality of death. It had scared me shitless.

Slowly, I came to terms with it and it was okay. It's almost like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I don't need to worry about making my life mean anything. It never will. There's just life, then death. I'm okay with that. Is it denial? Is this another part of my indifference? I honestly don't care.

"Only the death-dancers, these rare people who don't need distractions from the inevitable, can find true meaning in their lives." - isn't everything we do just a distraction from the inevitable? What is meaningful? Why not simply do the things that you feel will bring you joy, even if it is getting pissed or playing bingo every day?

I do know what you mean though. Most of what we do is out of habit. I don't know how much sense I made in this, but I'm tired now.

 

[darkwall]

I think we had a conversation faintly like this before, or maybe it was someone else, but we were basically talking about a pleasure button and I was saying that it wouldn't be a meaningful experience but a hole in your life. So I think this is where we disagree. I need truth and meaning to regulate things like pleasure, because otherwise we sink into mere hedonism.

Dostoyevsky went through what you went through in real life, when he narrowly avoided death by firing squad. I think to scare him they actually blindfolded him and everything. I have had similar dreams, but I think my suicide attempts more than anything changed my attitude to death. Before the last one I had a very blase attitude to life. I remember that once I was on a plane with my family that started dipping crazily, worse than any plane I've ever been on. People were screaming and praying, but I turned and looked at my sister, who also had had suicide attempts, and we were the only ones who were totally peaceful - because we'd been here before.

After the last one though I truly realised I wanted life, and also how close death is to life. Before I was simply stupid, like one of those young suicide bombers: now instead I'm scared of being suicidal again. For instance, I came off ADs too suddenly last year and I started getting intensely suicidal thoughts - one night was so bad I stayed up in someone else's room in a sort of self-suicide watch writing reasons to live, a kind of anti-suicide note. Perhaps my relationship with death is different, because I find myself wondering which of these winters will be the one where I get into a hole I can't climb out of, but I guess that I do constantly worry about how much time I have left.

 

[PoisonFlowers]

Yes, I remember that. It was on your Unhappy Britain thread. I also agree with what you're saying about the void. I think what I'm trying to say is that the meaningfulness is another construct of ours to protect ourselves from the utter pointlessness of it all. I don't mean to sound pessimistic - I don't feel negatively about it - but that's how I see it.

A song that expresses the emptiness of the illusion very well is Nude by Radiohead.

That dream snapped me out of it. I was thinking about suicide and that bullet in the head snapped me out of it.

It's interesting how you were the only ones who were at peace on that plane. One would think that after having come close to it, a person would fear death more.

Life is all we have. Pointless perhaps, but at least we exist. I hope you have many amazing new experiences yet little_buddha.

 

[Brian]

Budha, that was amazingly insightful to read, as are your replies. Don't ever let anyone say you have no insight, or no way with words.

Through my teenage years I tried not to think about death. I found it depressing. And even at 22, I've experienced what older people so commonly lament, something I never could comprehend. Each year, each month, does feel shorter. In fact, it was around this time last year I found this forum, lamenting my isolation, forlorn from 3 years severed from one who once meant so much to me, after what was really so little shared. My best friend.

Time is coming from a walk to a jog. I imagine in another 30 years, it'll be racing.

I had grown a little when I turned 19. I grew more when I turned 20, having spent a year working, enduring, occasionally rejoicing. By 21, I was who I am now. I think I've grown to what will be manhood for my life. I've been through some things and I've had to put my head down and bulldog forward more times than I can count, over obstacles both physical and emotional/intellectual. And yet, even my perspective of misery is but a drop in the pot to what some go through. To many, I am lucky. To me, others are lucky.

But through it all, I concluded that all our worries, our petty squabbles, the most important issues held by the highest politicians and most professed philosophers, even this discussion, are (to put it in more blue-collar terms than what you could probably manage) a hair on the ass of the universe. The most apocalyptic thing we can imagine happening via the natural cycle of things (ie, excluding religion), a meteor impact or inevitable consumption by our sun, is a routine thing in the universal cycle. Melting glaciers? Earthquakes, floods? They matter not, really. They only seem big and important because they dwarf us and our perspective of things, and pose a threat to our biological needs. Really, it could all be allowed to happen and nothing would change. No matter what happens now, one day our little blue marble will no longer exist. And even that event is the blink of an eye from the perspective of a universe-sized time scale. And we don't even really know what comes after that.

Some take this viewpoint to be dark and gloomy or defeatist; as depressing. I think when people come to realize these sorts of things, they will initially fall on a spectrum with two extremes at either end: On one end being Outrage, Despair, or even Suicide; on the other end lying Acceptance, Continuity, and Growth. I came to my personal realization on a gloomy day, pissing rain. I was in the middle of a field, my ratty work sweatshirt was filthy and soaked through. Through my earplugs I could still hear the drone of a diesel chipper, the chugging persistence of a machine skidding logs, the high whine of chainsaws. I looked up at the clouds, longing for warmth and dryness and a simple cup of hot coffee as I had many times before. Except all I saw was an overcast sky, and rain distorting my view through my safety glasses. There was no relief up there. This only mattered to me. I could not stop that rain, for all of my wishing. And yet, many live their entire lives working like this, many more wish they had the opportunity to do so. And outside of our little biosphere here in the solar system lies the universe, unmoved and persisting long beyond this sopping wet misery.

On I went. And eventually, I was inside.

I think I have come to see death and this Way of Things as matter-of-fact and I think I live my life regardless. Despite being miniscule and tiny, we still exist. So I might as well live with and accept the knowledge. Yet even still, by the nature of this realization of how small we are, I know that I may only be seeing a corner of this big picture.

I lack the resources to do 'amazing things' each and every day. I wonder, even if the opposite was true, if I wouldn't start missing the point of those experiences due to experiencing so many of them. But I am happy with what I do in my capacity, and with my plans and hopes for what I do want to see or experience.

Hopefully I've contributed to the discussion. Thanks for spurring it. You've given me pause to think and reflect a bit. I needed that.

 

[Lonesome Crow]

Order a supreme size taco to go
The grease will clog your heart.
that'll kill ya...but at least it'll taste good

 

[darkwall]

Hey, LC. You broke the truce and replied on a personal post of mine, but I love you for it. Truly, and not in a pretentious way. You hate me, and I need people like you to remind me what a pile of honeysuckle I am.

- LB

---

Brian: I promise that I will never let anyone say I have no way with words.

You're right, Brian. This life, these words, are vacuous and don;t mean a thing. You "bulldog" forward, but a bulldog has something to guard. What do we have? Nothing. This isn't insight: this is an open book. You see this in a lake, a sky, a skeleton in biology class. These words are air, Brian. There is no luck: there are no obstacles. There is nothing in between.

The politicians and the hobos have a grip on the most important thing in the world, and it has to do with what we are willing to let go of. And never believe that suicide is not a form of growth. Your revelations are as dirt because they did not bleed from you - I have a hundred ******* epiphanies a day, and the ones that don't dry me up are the ones that will fade themselves. So I don't believe you and the way you see death. I don't believe that there's a difference between denial and affirmation. Follow my thought process if you want, but it is best left alone. I believe that you are a hypocrite like me, Brian, and that your inspiration will too ring hollow. And yet I would give any money for you to prove me wrong.

 

[epileptic]

Just an idea regarding my thoughts on Death:

I have thought that death is just the continual experience of our observations with new distinct rules and laws regarding are new found perceptions...

Currently we are out of touch and out of alignment with our own vibrational configuration. The misconception that we are seperate creatures is probably the cause of it. Death is just the simple re-synchronization of all vibrational tones. Just a reconnection from a previous disconnection. The idea of Nirvana and enlightenment is to acquire this connection while in this human body experience.

 

[StarStrider]

I have passed the age at which death can be percieved as a perversely romantic melancholy.

Today it occupies my thoughts with a horrifying starkness for I know sooner or later my body will fail me, quite possibly in spectacular fashion, and beyond that moment my consciousness will be irrevocably voided.

If it were in my power - and I'm serious about this too, which is why I try not to think about it very often - I would take the entire world with me because I simply can't bear the idea of the Earth and it's inhabitants unfolding in my absence as it merely serves to rubber stamp how utterly insignificent the individual is in the cosmic sceme of things.