1.
I am sixty six and three quarters. I have lived two thirds of a century. I don’t want to die but realistically I know that the probability is that I will do sometime in the next twenty years, in all likelihood a lot sooner than that.
Presently, apart from the aches and pains and limitations of age, I am fit, healthy and still have my mind. There is nothing wrong with me. I am merely dying by degrees. We call it ageing.
Death is biologically programmed. It is not necessary. We are coded to die. It is in our genes. We have to get out of the way so that there is food and space for our offspring. We are past reproductive age and hence superfluous.
We do not like to think or talk about death. We ignore it and prefer to pretend it isn’t going to happen.
It is.
As Dylan said – ‘he not busy being born is busy dying’.
I am dying.
I don’t want to think of it but I know death lurks over my shoulder. Knowing you don’t believe well that would be so hard for me not to believe there is something better.
I think for myself that not believing in anything after makes me want to fill every second of the time I have. That’s how it works for me.
PS. I do think that being aware of our mortality, it really does give us the opportunity to be in the moment and love the moment now.
I appreciate what you say, Jonathan is like you. I know that you make the most of your life, but for me I feel it is sad that not believing in another life after, (can I say this to you and not cause offence?) I would miss not having you around, because I do believe. I am going to regret saying this aren’t I.
That’s what I believe.
Hi Anna. That doesn’t cause offence. How could it? I respect your belief in an afterlife even if I don’t share it. People having different beliefs is fine. It wouldn’t do for us to all be the same.
As we all are..
Yep – every minute
I thought about you last night, the line from It’s Alright Ma. ‘He who is not busy being born , is busy dying.’ Yeah on a literal sense, we are all dying. But on a spiritual level, are you busy being born?
Being born every moment – that’s a concept!
We start dying the minute we’re born, don’t we?
Well, as a biologist I would say that we start dying the moment we stop growing. The brain stops growing around twenty/twenty one and finishes wiring up at twenty five. I’d say that’s when we start to decline. At twenty five we have every brain cell we’ll ever have. After that they start dying off.
Life is a sexually transmitted terminal illness. Death was always hush hush growing up, but I started talking about it a lot when Elizabeth Kubler Ross came out with On Death and Dying. I talked about it all the time. Then went into that specialty in my psychology career. I tried to open people up to it, normalize it. I see it every day in Nature. I am well aware of my own death. I love your vulture photo, or is it a condor? They are so good at getting us to notice death, and also cleaning it up.
Opher, the background color on this piece made it really hard to read. Maybe it is just my screen, but it is almost the same color as the print….so with my aging eyes…
Very effective having a wordless post … was it intentional?
Sorry about that background colour Mary. I didn’t intend that. WordPress does that sometimes. Sorry. I didn’t notice.
This has to be the most surreal response ever. I answer to most things, but Mary is a new one. The background colour would be black, then. Haha, anyway!
Dave – Mary is a nice name!
I’m speechless. No Dave, I didn’t intend it. It was wordpress. It does that from time to time. I’ll see if I can edit it.
No, honestly, I thought you were being arty … you know, death and a blank message, just a vulture. Might try a bit of enigma myself. Scare the birds …
That’s good. Sorry about that.
It’s not beyond me but this time it was unintentional.
Reblogged this on Opher's World and commented:
Sorry about the print colour. I’ve redone it in orange – WordPress does this from time to time.
That looks good. Easier to read. 🙂
Yes – sorry about that Mary. I would have dealt with it if I had noticed.