Essence 1: On Death
Dorothy Du (ISB G10)
I’ve spent way too many restless midnights rolling around on my bed contemplating life, death, and everything in-between that when I reached some sort of conclusion, I just had to write about it. This essay is part one of a series I’m writing called “Essence” where I explore certain ideas or perspectives of the world I find interesting.
Enjoy this short dive into the concept of death, which will (hopefully) leave you with a calmer and clearer understanding of life~
The concept of death first approached me when my grandmother had passed away. I still remember my frail 8-year-old body standing in the doorway, bare feet ice-cold against the floor, staring at the tears daring to escape my mother’s red-rimmed eyes. Everything felt wrong-- the darkness a little too heavy, the wind a little too loud, and the lamps a little too dim. Surprisingly and almost shamefully, my number one emotion throughout the whole occasion—flying back to China, attending the funeral, resuming school— was not sadness, but confusion. I wondered that if my grandmother was truly in a better place, one where she does not have to endure the pain of cancer and the fight with the weakness that came with age, shouldn’t I be glad? But then again, she’s gone forever, and that somehow leaves the rest of us a little lonelier, a little emptier.
Recalling that perfectly black night when I truly drained my soul with crying, I still wonder: were we crying for her, or ourselves?
Today, I am equally ignorant as I was 7 years ago on the concept of death. In fact, we probably all are. Jeff Marson, a philosophy professor at Middlesex University, argues in his short essay “death and its concept” that “the concept of death has a use for the living, while death itself has no use for anything.” He goes on to further elaborate by saying, “I will cease to be conscious before the end. No matter how close I come to it, death recedes before me.” We are only dead for others because when the end arrives, we are already gone. Thus, “death is always described from the perspective of the living. As Ludwig Wittgenstein famously put it, death is not an experience in life.” Even so, I feel it is essential to understand that just because we can’t experience death does not take away from its importance.
The influence death has on life can go two contrasting ways. One is that death ensures we live life to the fullest and that we explore every possibility in our limited time, treasuring every moment unconsciously knowing it won’t last. Another is the opposite; death restricts our purpose and meaning because it tells us that nothing matters in the end and that no matter what decisions we make, how much effort we put in, the result is ultimately the same--in other words, death tells us that we have no purpose. If we had to choose one of these options to believe in, I would advise everyone to choose the first:
Death may not be an experience of life, but death gives life its experiences.
It does not actually matter whether we have a purpose in this world or if everything is just purely coincidental because the purpose of existence is not a concrete reality or fact we can prove. Therefore, we can invent, create, and imagine any purpose of life we want, and no one can prove us wrong. If that is so, why should we believe that death restricts our purpose? Why should we believe that death can take away from life? We are the ones who are able to give death its power. And we simply have no reason, to give death the power to take away from life.
If thinking of the nature of death as something that helps us fully immerse ourselves in life makes living more enjoyable, why not do that?
The trouble with contemplating death is that there is an instinctive fear that comes along with it. Whether it is the immense physical pain that death is associated with, the immense mental pain of knowing that you will eventually be forgotten, or the immense emotional pain we feel when our loved ones leave us, death is not something we should waste our time thinking about. Yet, there are still some beautiful concepts with it that are worth exploring once in a while.
Today, I will conclude with a phrase that inspired this essay.
“Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why? I ask myself; shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take a train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star.”
(Courtesy of Vincentvangogh.org)