Tuesday, January 02, 2007

[transmission start]

thoughts: things unknown...

I know its a rather morbid way to start the new year, but i've been thinking... why do people fear death so much? of course the other question to ask is it really death they fear, or dying? if you look at it you realise that both these thing do not necessarily mean the same thing. from the good people at dictionary.com:

Death: the act of dying; the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism.

Dying: to cease to live; undergo the complete and permanent cessation of all vital functions; become dead.

I guess you could then say that death is an end result, whereas dying is a process. but definitions aside, i really do wonder why it is that people have a fear of death. People have often likened life to a journey that you travel and that when you die, it ends (or not, if you believe in reincarnation or ghosts). There has been much speculation and discussion about exactly what happens when we die - where we go, what we do, what it really means to die, because like the definition says, death is "the end of life". Hardly anyone knows what its like - in a badly humoured pun - and hasn't lived to tell the tale. the closest thing we have is those "near-death" experiences that people have - you know, those experiences where your life flashes before your eyes and you think "this is the end, the big one. bye bye world" only to come back to the world of the living.

The question then should be "why do we fear the unknown?" Perhaps because it is just that - unknown. Certainty, familiarity and the knowledge of what comes next are things that i think most people want. The unknown on the other hand is everything but that, and it is the fear of this that makes people fear death - because what happens next is unknown. In an attempt to get over that fear, and to make death something less unknown, they come up with ideas and theories - explanations of what happens after death, or even ways they can cheat death - to put off dying and live forever. But is immortality really something worth it? And are the theories people come up with just a means to reassure themselves that "everything's going to be ok"?

I'm no genius, so i won't answer those questions. but i will say this: perhaps death isn't really the end. perhaps it's just another beginnning. but i'm not omniscient, so who am i to say anything?

till next time...

[tranmsission end]

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chr1s0ng put the word on the street at 12:21 PM
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