For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking a philosophy summer course about “Death and Dying.” I have always had a fascination with death and the process of dying amongst the living. For the most part, during my “pre-teen” age, I was reading works from poets like Edgar Allen Poe and Robert Frost. They have shaped me to be the kind of thinker I am today as a writer, an artist, and a reader who dissects every literary work of art that is out there.
The professor teaching the class tells us that “in order to understand the dead, we must understand the living, because that is all that we know.” We write and we share what we know because we can describe it, even if it isn’t a tangible thing, there is the essence of the idea of how “it can be described.”
Facing death is compartmentalized in a series of whether one who is dying or is dead, died, accidentally, tragically, or simply in their sleep.
The way how one views death reflects on every single choice they have made or how those choices had an affect on their lives. Throughout the course, my colleagues and I have read many pieces of literature and it’s magnificent and beautiful to read about how fictional and real character viewed their lives and how they value death.
Living a fulfilled life is like living with care, but still taking risks and going with the outcome of the effect one made to cause it. The fearlessness creates this attitude that guides one to not have questions like, “what if,” “I should’ve,” or “I could’ve.”
I wrote a poem and one part of it goes like this:
“We sometimes forget that we’re only human and that we are as fragile as the wings of a butterfly. One touch and everything can diminish into flakes of dust that we sweep of the floor in our messy rooms that we don’t care to clean every once a while until it’s finals week.”
And that is life, that is living life, the tiny things from doing your chores to hanging out with your friends to have a good time and socialize with people. Nothing waits for anyone and if you just sit there thinking what is there for me to do today, well, ask yourself what will you do that will make your life have meaning.
Your memories will be the only thing that you will take with you, all the material stuff that you “own” will not be there with you on your death bed. As harsh as that sounds, sometimes we just need to hear these things to wake us up and live life to its fullest and to its full potential. This doesn’t mean for one to be reckless though.
Seeking meaning in life is another discussion for another time, but in short, meaning in life is far beyond one’s reach if they don’t know what they enjoy doing most and pursuing it.
