Thursday, July 03, 2008

Things I am afraid of Part Two: Death

Death has always been a reliable source of apprehension. I can recall sitting in bed as a child worrying about the prospect of going to heaven or hell. It was not the fear of going to hell that gave me the willies, it was the idea that I would be stuck in either place for Eternity. There isn’t anything I like to do so much that I would enjoy doing it Forever. There I was in my Spiderman PJ’s tucked away in my Transformer sheets, trying to list things that would drone away the milenia. It was thinking like this that resulted in my first and only peaceful resolution to the afterlife. But we will get to that later, because as of late, even that is not solid ground.

First things first. It is not the dying that scares me. One of my most recent realizations has to do with my lack of fear for dying. As much as I enjoy living, I really am OK with the idea of dying. Outside of having a family, I sorta feel like I have had a pretty successful run at life. From elementary school, it was obvious that everyone dies, and we are therefore given enough time to get over the fact that we will not be here forever. It’s what’s on the other side of that partition that worries me. There are many things that I am contentedly ignorant about, but death is not one of them. My childhood theory was a good one, at death you simply return to the source. You die and then you become one with that which created you, i.e. God. It occurred to me that only perfection could satisfy the demands of eternity, and the only perfect thing in my mind was God. Gone were the golden streets, and the long lost family members, and in came a reunification with the force that created you. That let me sleep easy.

But at some point, things started to get shaken up. The What Ifs appeared? What if there is no God? What if there is a God, and he/she/it is not perfect? What if there is no God, what is the point of this infinitesimally small existence? What if we create our own afterlife? What if… What if… What if… Perhaps the worse one of all, what if there is simply nothing? It was around this time, that I started resenting my inquisitive mind, its lack of acceptance of things assumed. In general, I started to be jealous of the happily religious person’s carefree view of death. To them, Heaven was like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Once you get it your happy. But just like the pot of gold, what do you think is going to happen once you get there? All problems are solved I suppose. It seemed most people looked upon death in the same way they looked upon any other seemingly attainable goal: once I get there, everything will be just fine. Unfortunately, God/nature wired me a bit different.

So I have been left in a weird spot with death. The spot of ignorance. The best theory to the afterlife I have is: I don’t know, I will just have to see when I get there. [I am reminded of something I told my sister long ago. I said that I was going to wait until I was 80 to get baptized, and then I will be cleansed of all my previous sins. I should of known I was a heathen back then. But even then I was half joking, half serious about my post-mortem insecurities.] The only problem with the ‘I don’t know theory’ is my proclivity for control. I love to control the things that are important to me, and death (potentially the longest part of my ‘life’) is something I feel I have no control over. But although I can have intense moments of brief despair, I am becoming more and more ok with the idea of just letting things play out. Nowadays I can use my imagination to explore the vast possibilities of death without feeling much nervousness. I keep these thoughts on a tight leash though, because one misstep and I am back where I started, sitting in bed scared of eternity.

Bonus: Has it never borrowed you guys that we are all going to hell in someone’s book? If you are Christian you believe Christ is the way. If you are Muslim, there is Mohammad. Hindu… well you have thousands of Gods and none can spare you the suffering that is life. Buddhist, the way of the Buddha can bring you enlightenment. Then there are the hundreds of smaller religions that are equally exclusive, or refreshingly open. But the point is, if we accept the separatist view of most religions, aren’t we just condemning the vast majority of the earth’s population… mostly because they were not brought up believing the same things as us. Probably the worse part of my fear of death is that I seem to be rather a lone in respecting life/death enough to at least give it some serious thought. Or maybe it’s just not a good topic of conversation.

Lastly, the flip side of fear is excitement. For every moment of fear is an equally intense feeling of excitement, it’s a land where anything can happen!

1 Comments:

Blogger CJ Nichol said...

I'm glad that you shared this. I thought death didn't scare you like it did other people. What has scared me most about death is the eternity afterwards. What would I do? I know you're not supposed to think about it in Earthly terms but I have no other basis and I don't find as much comfort knowing I would be with God as other Christians seem to have. The thought still scares me. It's like death is the last big risk you take on this Earth but eventually everbody has to take it. The idea of living for eternity or just going back to dirt (nothing) both scare me, but the former scares me a little less. Like you, the idea of hell is only briefly terrifying. I began to fear my going to hell less after watching & reading Malcolm X and realizing I couldn't imagine him going to hell just because he is a Muslim. Not a very spiritual source of awakening but it is what it is. I'm rambling a bit now, but you surprised me with something new today. Love you, Nichole.

5:48 PM  

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