Tuesday, October 14, 2008

My View on 'Death' (Part I)

Death, according to Wiki, is the termination of the biological functions that define living organisms. It refers both to a specific event and to a condition, the true nature of which it has for millennia been a central concern of the world's religious traditions and philosophers to penetrate; in particular, the possibility or otherwise of what is known as life after death.

Death can be one of the recurring topics in my blogs, similar to others like 'Time' and 'Dreams', Death is part of life. The ironic part of that Death is cutoff point of Life, so whether it is 'part' of life, then it is up for debate. The important thing is that Death is something no living being can escape from, and Death itself is still full of mystery. That's why it is a fascinating topic that can be talked over and over again especially when we get older with more life experience and knowledge.

Death is always considered as an 'end' or 'conclusion' or life. Though it is inevitable, the time of occurrence is usually unknown unless you kill yourself or you are suffering from a long-term fatal illness. Therefore, people usually views their own death as either in a passive way just to let it happens when it is due, or prepare for it ahead.

For most people when they are young and healthy, death is usually not on their mind, they will think about marriage, entertainment activities, works, fame, family, etc. So, the only thing that they will do about their own death is buying insurance, so their surviving love ones can have some financial supports upon their death. One more step would be drafting their own will, so other materials belongings will be distributed peacefully in most cases. However, they rarely think about what kind of 'legacy' that they are planning to leave behind. Forget about the death as a result of committing suicide of which I blogged before. For God sake, if you die in an accident, first not talking about what you have regretted of not getting certain things done, what sort of things you want your love ones to remember you for. Cos, money left behind is the least memorable items though most 'useful' and 'practical', other material things if they are not for sale, their values are for people to remember you when they see and touch them. But what do they remember you for? I'm sure nobody want to remember for the bad and sad things that they did. Unless someone like to 'mentally self-abuse' themselves, otherwise, their memories are inclined to remember the happy and good things about the departed ones.

So, if you want to be remembered, using the logic above of 'reversal thinking', we better do more goods and express our love to the people around us when we are alive, also, that should be done continuously and persistently. Cos, good deeds need to be accumulated to generate good feelings, and that takes time. As we don't know when we will die, so it is better to do that everyday. Without mentioning the Death part, is that what we teach our kids what to do and what we learned when we were young at school or from adults? What make it such a discovery by someone us that need to read those 'life-inspirational' books or pay to attend those lectures to recall such simple wisdom?

Of course, some people said they don't give a **** on what the livings remember them for. They just choose they way they wanna live. To be a bit responsible, they may financially pre-arrange their own affairs on how to take care of their dead body, funeral, burials, etc. That's fine to some extents. It is only a matter of how you view your life. Someone may not agree with that, but I think everybody wants to be loved, those who claim the opposite are usually because they are not loved.....well, it can be another blogging topic.....





When we look at history, usually the death of important people are remembered and recorded. for regular folks like most of us, we usually only remembered by our immediate family members. After 2 generations, then our death will usually mean 'names' in our family history. There is nothing wrong with that. However, I still believe that trying to make more big positive impacts to the love ones when we are alive would be a right thing to do.



2 comments:

Leona said...

Hi Joel,

Thank you for visiting my blog.
On the topic "life and death", you are writing way better than I. I just picked up bits and pieces of ideas I learnt from books/heard from other people. But you have your own way of thought. I like the idea of "reversal thinking" to suggest a person accumulating more good deeds when alive so one can be remembered. How positive!

:)
Nice to know you.

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