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It is never personal, you're not the protagonist

It's so easy to become offended. It actually comes pretty natural. Someone says something.  You feel it's directed at you Strong reaction follows No need to react, it's got nothing to do with you as a person Imagine some remarks about academic work versus manual one, a bit dismissive about the latter. You don't have a degree and never wanted one. You know very well it takes years of experience and training to do what you're doing. Talent is involved too, as some people do have "two left hands".  You still feel you should add something to the conversation, but not sure if it is going to be well-received. No need to enlighten the other party right now Most people think in terms of opposites. If it's not this, it's that and it can't be anything else. Certainty of one's convictions is also a form of self-reassurance that everything is stable in one's world. Other points of view cannot be allowed because they are disruptive. Cognitive disrup

Death, statistics and reality

 They are usually buried deep in official statistics folders, far away from awareness.  Death figures are not something anyone likes looking at on a regular, let alone daily, basis. Not even actuaries, presumably. It changed with Covid-19 (why 19 when the pandemic started in 2020, but that's another question). Daily death figures are everywhere. They do not make comfortable reading, listening to or talking about. For anyone who lost a relative or a friend, they are horrifically painful. If not, fear for one's own fate is a powerful enough trigger. Starting with the ancients, not just classical Greece and Rome, death was a topic to ponder and draw wisdom from. Every thing that was left undone, all the words that could have been spoken, the impermanence of life, they were brought to the forefront of consciousness, or so we like to think. It's not modern philosophers who invented "Memento Mori", nor are these two Latin words widely quoted. How could they be? They are

On ice

               Thalassa, Thalassa, said the older fish.  Can't hear you, replied the younger one.               I've got an ear infection, spent too much time on ice, and fish don't speak anyway.

Mourning becomes us

I don't know how to write about death without using words which have already been exhausted by intensive use. I don't want to be original either,  it would be a terrible act of self-indulgence and ultimately psychopathic behaviour. For short, I have no idea how to express what I feel whenever I hear of someone's death, especially when it is someone close. Am I saddened by their fate or mine? The realisation that someone is no longer within reach, be it remotely, always comes as a surprise.  It is hitting the same nerve, imaginary or not, that never learns. Sudden deprivation, loss of a certainty, however vague and infrequently remembered, fear of one's own inevitable death? No, fear is not the right word, although it has been mentioned by many as the dominant emotion when confronted with news off someone's demise. There must be something different, heavily tinged, at times, with the guilt of not having made that phone call or visit. Pre-death behavio