My seventy-second birthday is in a few months. Every year this
thing called a birthday happens no matter what I do, and every year it
gets worse, and every year it brings up thoughts about death and
wondering how much longer I have. Of course I am not alone.
Having, it seems, overcome the health problems I was having, I find myself in spite of my age able to continue my work, since it is mainly mental. I can't travel as I use to but the internet nowadays makes that unnecessary, so I am productive and have no excuse for feeling sorry for myself.
Still, each year that passes is a year closer to death, and I fear both dying (the discomforts and emotional things and so on that it implies) but, more, I fear death. I have no illusions that there is nothing there to be afraid of -- that is the problem -- there is nothing there. Long ago I grew up and stopped believing childhood pablums about heaven where all the little puppy dogs go and hell where evil people like to imagine their enemies (since I don't think I really have any enemies and in my life can only think of one person I ever hated -- and now I just feel sorry for him).
We have a biological instinct to want to survive (animals that don't do their utmost to survive in the short term don't and therefore don't have progeny and their genes disappear). Does this explain the human desire to live? I don't think so -- otherwise we would not have suicide as the ultimate expression of despair -- nor do animals with such an instinct really have any conception of death anyway. The biological survival instinct causes us to move our fingers from a hot stove, but does not cause us to sit and wonder about what we are doing with our lives, is it enough, and how much time is left.
I suppose it might be some sort of side effect of this instinct -- but how this would work doesn't suggest itself, to me, at least. No -- it is plain enough to me that although death is real it is not right. We should not die, and I trust someday in the future we will not. In the meantime something is terribly wrong.
Having, it seems, overcome the health problems I was having, I find myself in spite of my age able to continue my work, since it is mainly mental. I can't travel as I use to but the internet nowadays makes that unnecessary, so I am productive and have no excuse for feeling sorry for myself.
Still, each year that passes is a year closer to death, and I fear both dying (the discomforts and emotional things and so on that it implies) but, more, I fear death. I have no illusions that there is nothing there to be afraid of -- that is the problem -- there is nothing there. Long ago I grew up and stopped believing childhood pablums about heaven where all the little puppy dogs go and hell where evil people like to imagine their enemies (since I don't think I really have any enemies and in my life can only think of one person I ever hated -- and now I just feel sorry for him).
We have a biological instinct to want to survive (animals that don't do their utmost to survive in the short term don't and therefore don't have progeny and their genes disappear). Does this explain the human desire to live? I don't think so -- otherwise we would not have suicide as the ultimate expression of despair -- nor do animals with such an instinct really have any conception of death anyway. The biological survival instinct causes us to move our fingers from a hot stove, but does not cause us to sit and wonder about what we are doing with our lives, is it enough, and how much time is left.
I suppose it might be some sort of side effect of this instinct -- but how this would work doesn't suggest itself, to me, at least. No -- it is plain enough to me that although death is real it is not right. We should not die, and I trust someday in the future we will not. In the meantime something is terribly wrong.
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