This chapter discusses that throughout life some people deny the fact of death, and others embrace the truth of life's destiny, making the idea of death less scary for them. This chapter came at a somewhat inconvenient time in my life as I have just lost another loved one just 4 days ago at the time of my writing this.
With that being said the first quote I would like to highlight is "once recognized and accepted, our mortality loses some of its terror" (page 384). tI truly do agree with the text in the sense that those who do not deny the idea of death experience less fear when it is their time to go. I only say that because the family member I lost this week was the second in the past few months, and I think they both had different approaches to looking at death. One knew it was coming to be their time and was embracing that, while still continuing to put up a fight. The other, never talked of death and even made efforts to avoid those types of conversations until they knew they were about to go. As this family member was about to go they began having panic attacks about dying, they were terrified. We are a Catholic family, he knew he had another place of belonging after he passed, but was just terrified of dying.
The next quote that I want to feature is "confronting death at a safe distance, whether at a racetrack or in a movie house, can make us feel that we are strong enough to withstand the real thing" (388). Another statement that I completely agree with. Maybe I wouldn't have agreed with it as much last week, but I like to have the mindset that experiences can be used as learning opportunities. This quote is oddly relatable to the grandpa that I just lost this week. He loved drag racing, fast cars, all those sorts of things. He was never afraid to get behind the wheel and push a car way too close to its limits. He was never afraid to race down some road that it was definitely very illegal to be racing on. But the past few months the fear of dying began to consume him. How could someone so fearless in other aspects be so afraid of death? I do truly believe part of his fear of dying was due to how much he avoided the subject while he was alive. I will never know why he did choose to avoid it, but after seeing how bad it consumed him in his last days, I want to make an effort to not do the same myself. Not to say I think there was anything wrong with the way he went about things, we all do what we do for our own reasons, I just don't think I will choose to do the same.
The next quote I have is "the opposing forces of fate and free will have been a source of confusion for thousands of years" (page 392). I really do hope we talk about the topic of fate in class because there are truly so many ways to look at it and we have a very thoughtful class so I would enjoy hearing what everyone thinks about it. Personally, I do think that some things yes are up to fate. I do however believe that free will also payed a role in fate. Everyone is bound to die at some point, possibly predetermined before we are even born. But say you are a smoker, you are going to cut time off of your lifespan. These topics sort of in my mind relate to nature versus nurture. The text shared that the Greeks believed things happened to them that were out of their control. But how out of their control was it really? Were they doing things out of the ordinary. Were they acting in a fearful manner and taking precautions that were unnecessary causing them to live in a way different then they were intended. Again I am excited to hopefully hear what other people in the class have to say about this since I know the ideas around it are so different.
Janaro, R. P., & Altshuler, T. C. (2017). The Art of Being Human: The humanities as a technique for living (11th ed.). Pearson.
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