A Matter of Life and Death

I've recently learned of a few close acquaintances and friends who have been diagnosed with cancer or some other life-ending condition. While it is true that decline and death are as much a part of life as birth and growth, it doesn't make it any easier to be able to think about and accept this part of the larger natural cycle of life and death.

Death and dealing with death is one of the things that is shared by all humans throughout history. It has been said that humans are different from most/all other living organisms in that humans are able to ponder their own death. Whether that is true or not, death is an inescapable part of our lives, and it always will be. No matter what heights of achievement we reach, and no matter how rich we may become, death will always be the final result of one's life. It is guaranteed. We're stuck with it. It is truly a tragedy, and one that the elderly and the sick know all too well, and one that causes the young and the healthy to spend incredible amounts of thought, energy, and money to try to avoid for as long as possible.

So how "should" we deal with this fact of death? How can we integrate it into our lives in the mentally healthiest way? How can anything related to decline and death be thought of as good?

I think the simplest answer lies in the realm of spirituality. Spirituality, in this case, I define very roughly as a paradigm of thought that you and your life are a part of something bigger than just you and just your life, and that the larger "thing" you are a part of is good. Thinking that decline and death are part of a much larger "good" makes them seem much smaller, and gives you something "bigger" and "more important" to focus your thoughts on. Christians can help themselves through decline and death by believing they are part of God's greater plan (which happens to include death as a transition). Atheists can help themselves through decline and death by revering the cycle of life and feeling that the ecosphere of Earth is "good" and so their decline and death is a necessary part of the larger cycle of life. But are these transferrals of thought to something bigger enough? I don't think so, because even though humans can think of themselves as part of a larger whole, they still have to think and die as individuals. So, the simplest answer is likely not sufficient in day to day life.

So what else is left to us if we can't get our focus outside of our physical self? What about the "I've had a good life" and all the other ways of getting our focus outside of the current time? These mechanisms also work, though they too are simply transferral of focus. Is transferral of focus away from the pain or disappointment or fear of decline and death enough?

I don't know. In some ways if you have a long slow decline towards death, the effort to find something positive to focus on becomes harder as you have less and less of your remaining life that you can consider positive, and the reminders of the inevitable end are present in ever greater proportions.

Is the ideal then to be able to face the end with as much dignity and calm as you can muster? Is the ideal to be able to show others that decline and death can still be a positive part of life in some way? Is the ideal to be inconspicuous and as little trouble and inconvenience as possible to others as we deal with the decline to the end of our lives?

Personally, I hope to be able to maintain my dignity and sense of perspective. I hope my ability to focus on positive thoughts (of any kind) stays strong to the end, and that I can be an example of how decline and death may be a necessary part of life, but the self-caused destruction of one's view of life is not a necessary part of that. I hope I can do even a small part to help destroy the perceptions that lead our society to spend so much of its resources and abilities on the impossible task of trying to avoid the unavoidable....