How Do You handle Death?
POSTED BY: RiveR6213
UPDATED: Sunday, January 18, 2009 19:09
VIEWED: 23778
PAGE 6 of 15
Quote:
Originally posted by copilot:
So that is how I feel about death. But some days my christian upbring rears it ugly head and I worry that they're right and I'm a sinner and shall burn for all eternity.
Of the six early Christian belief systems three said that everyone made it into heaven in the end (Pope John Paul II seemed to support this, which is odd for a Catholic) two said that the evil ones were wiped out of existence, and only one said that damnation was eternal.
If memory serves that is.
For the Christian in you let me quote your holy book:
"God will have all to be saved."
God has a tendency to get what he wants. His will be done. But for those who didn't catch that bit it is more explicit elsewhere.
"In Adam all condemned, in Christ all live."
"In Adam all die, in Christ all live."
Interesting that, all who are condemned and die shall live through Christ, if someone somehow managed not to be condemned through Adam, perhaps if they were an aardvark, then they might not live through Christ, but the religion is very specific about the fate of humans.
Certainly more than two quotes worth, but now is not the time for too much.
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Quote:
Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:
Well, my question to you now though is, do you not think your past feelings/outlook on life/death could return or perhaps be more evenly balanced. Y'know less of two extremes?
I only ask because your present time, as with your past time, is but a moment, a fraction of life, therefore do you not think that drawing a conclusion on life perceiveing it merely from the 'moment' point of view as somewhat limiting?
I mean I've had my moments where I've wanted nothing to do with anyone! (except my Dog he's the best) and it's left me thinking to hell with 'em all.
But and this thread kinda proves it - I always end up caring.
The
Somnambulist
The answer to your question is no. I don't believe it’s possible for my past feelings/outlook on life/death could return or perhaps be more evenly balanced.
It's also very easy to see how a person like me is going to end up. You take what you see now and extrapolate. A blind person can see it.
The safest thing for me to do is keep myself safe and try to limit my exposure to other people. Don't make any close friends and stay the hell out of committed relationships. Avoid human contact at all costs, and keep everything superficial. I think if I do this everything should be okay.
Hanging around those weird Christians a few months ago really made me want to lock myself away as fast as possible. They were a shock, but they were nice, and they really wanted to be friends. I had to get away from them. Friends have expectations of you. I don't want anyone in my personal life to have any expectations of me, and I don't want to have expectations of them.
I'm 44 years of age. I've lived long enough to see how the game of life is played and my role in it. As far as I'm concerned, the game isn’t worth playing because the rules are too weird, and I'm tired of all of it anyway. I can't commit suicide because I tried that already and I have a stiff shoulder that's healing pretty well along with some pain as a reminder that I'm an idiot.
So the next thing for me to do besides self-termination is isolation. I've got maybe another good 20 years left so I think I can hide out for that whole time. It’s not like I left anyone around who would miss me. I made certain that there wouldn’t be any people who missed me.
I am proud of the apathy that I have regarding other people's death. To not need people is a freedom that a lot of folks really don't know about. It’s like being unchained.
Oh well, I'm rambling.
River
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Ok, I have a question which, unlike the "pyche 101" other people were doing, is off topic.
You don't care about us because, well, we're people, and you don't care about people. If we all died horrible painful deaths you wouldn't even shed a tear, at least that's the impression I get from your posts, so if we have so little of an impact on you, if we matter so little, why bother talking to us?
You wouldn't miss us were we gone, so what possible purpose is there for being here to begin with? That which won't be missed can hardly be something gratifying. I mean if you don't feel worse without something by defintion of the word, "worse," you do not feel better with it.
You serve yourself, you said so, how can interacting with people you wouldn't lament the absence of possibly be serving yourself?
Why not go out and find something you care about, something you enjoy? Something where you actually feel better when you have it than when you don't.
-
I'm not saying I want you gone, I'd miss you were you gone, but this is a forum, and all you can do here is interact with the people you couldn't care less about. Why not enjoy yourself?
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Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
Ok, I have a question which, unlike the "pyche 101" other people were doing, is off topic.
You don't care about us because, well, we're people, and you don't care about people. If we all died horrible painful deaths you wouldn't even shed a tear, at least that's the impression I get from your posts, so if we have so little of an impact on you, if we matter so little, why bother talking to us?
You wouldn't miss us were we gone, so what possible purpose is there for being here to begin with? That which won't be missed can hardly be something gratifying. I mean if you don't feel worse without something by defintion of the word, "worse," you do not feel better with it.
You serve yourself, you said so, how can interacting with people you wouldn't lament the absence of possibly be serving yourself?
Why not go out and find something you care about, something you enjoy? Something where you actually feel better when you have it than when you don't.
-
I'm not saying I want you gone, I'd miss you were you gone, but this is a forum, and all you can do here is interact with the people you couldn't care less about. Why not enjoy yourself?
I don't even know how to answer your question.
River
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Quote:
Originally posted by RiveR6213:
I don't even know how to answer your question.
Fair enough.
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Quote:
I guess i really don't care about humans. The human race can kiss my ass.
River
River - I won't kiss your ass
but I WILL give you a hug! 
I myself cry at McDonald's commercials. I can handle death. I don't fall apart in emergencies, and I don't act a fool. But death affects me for a long time. My grandma died in March - still not dealt with it really.
I am on The List. We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"
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Quote:
Originally posted by FutureMrsFIllion:
But death affects me for a long time. My grandma died in March - still not dealt with it really.
My grandmother died the semester before this past one, but it didn't really hit me until the one that just ended. My worst semester, I just couldn't stop thinking about the results.
I find that I'm not as sad that she's gone as what I see happening as a result, the farm will be sold and ripped up, her house will probably be torn down, all that she physically left behind will be gone, it'll be like she never existed except for a marker in a cemetery.
She had a good life and if she was right she’s still having one, back with her husband, so I don't really feel bad that she died, though I do miss her, but the idea of the place they lived, the farm he worked, the strawberry fields I grew up in and have always thought of as an extension of my grandparents, and all else they left behind being destroyed. That makes me want to cry.
Death is just another part of life, in fact it's the defining part, something is only alive if it can die, we all move toward it, but we leave marks, those should stay and be remembered long after people forgot who made them, not be blown away like footprints in the sand.
That land, that house my grandfather built and both of them loved, those were marks that should have lasted, but they wont.
-
So I guess that's how I handle death, I'm more concerned with preserving what someone left behind than understanding where, if anywhere, they went. I'm more afraid of losing what I remember them by than ... well something or other.
-
Selfish I suppose.
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I cannot recall the first ten years of my life, suffice to say, it's been assumed and reported to me that some run of the mill tragedy is probably the cause. There were probably lessons taught that I had to relearn in that time span, and if I have any prior encounter with death, it's not one that I can conjure very clearly. Everyone experiences it young to a degree, loss of friends, grandparents, etc. I know that a childhood friend with cancer died while convulsing in bed, falling out, and breaking his neck. But I didn't see it. I know I attended several funerals when I was young, but of people that I didn't know. Dead bodies are just life size dolls to someone who doesn't understand.
My first recollection of death is one many children experience much younger. It was with a small creature; a hampster. He was mine, and I was 13. At the age of 13, I still didn't have a grasp on what death was. But I liked pro-wrestling, so it didn't strike me as odd to power bomb my hampster onto my bed. Having done it so many times without killing him, I moved on to the hard wood floor. He landed, and instead of rolling back onto his feet, his head remained leaned back and his chest began heaving. I was so scared, I picked his limp body up and put him back in his cage. I watched him lie there in the corner, struggling to breath, the life slowly fading from him. Then he stopped. I cried very hard that night because I was afraid. All these stories of God and morality when I was growing, and now I had taken the life of a living creature, so small and innocent, it's care and protection having been entrusted to me by my parents. Like any and all tragedies, I got over the immediacy of the feeling, but I'm very sure that the meaning of it all was absorbed as a first and permanent idea of life and death.
Throughout middle school, I was picked on and chastised. But as my love for pro-wrestling grew, so did I find that I had a unique indifference to pain. Eventually I began head butting walls and lockers, jumping off of balconies, letting people hit me and slam me to the ground. In all of the confusion, I made what I believe is a common mistake; I mistook pain for death. It made sense in a rudimentary way. Death is an ultimate outcome of pain. Bleeding out, burning, drowning, heart attack, even dying in your sleep is accompanied by several months or years of pain leading up to it. So now, naturally, I have a tough guy image, not afraid of pain and therefore not afraid of death... or at least, not my primitive understanding of it. I wear my scars on my sleeve, or actually, my arm. Self mutilation isn't beyond me, because the scars are further proof that I'm tough and brave. You might call it insane, but imagine my surprise many years latter when I find similar cultural beliefs in the German Schmiss and the Japanese practice of Matanuki.
Of course, no wannabe bad ass is complete without his defining moment as a pathetic wimp. Mine came in 10th grade when I was arrested for assault and possession of a weapon on school grounds. I was taken into handcuffs and spent the night in a holding cell. Again, I cried, because now I knew the difference. I found out that night that indifference to pain was not the same as indifference to death, and I found out that there were many worse things in the world than either pain or death.
When things were settled, and I was attending a new private school for trouble makers, pro-wrestling just wasn't doing it anymore. I had once sawed my arm down to the bone just to scare a girl into not talking to me, but that was small beans to what I was into now. I needed something deeper and more stable than a soap opera. Although I had been routinely practicing martial arts from the age of 10, I was never very serious about it, but now it became an invaluable outlet. Martial arts led to Japanese history, and eventually a synthesis of the two lead me to the Hagakure, "Hidden by Leaves" by Yamamoto Tsunetomo. In it, Tsunetomo identified death as the most sincere act that one cou
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Quote:You failed that creature like someone failed you, you are that hampster, emotionally (Please excuse the simplistic yet often true psych 101). Forgive yourself as you would forgive those who failed you, as you would forgive another child who killed his hampster by a mistake in his under-developed judgement. We, our parents, and our grand-parents are human, and subject to flaws and pressures. However, we, at the more recent end, can more easily benefit from hindsight, and evolve emotionally.
Originally posted by ChrisMoorhead:
I watched him lie there in the corner, struggling to breath, the life slowly fading from him. Then he stopped. I cried very hard that night because I was afraid. All these stories of God and morality when I was growing, and now I had taken the life of a living creature, so small and innocent, it's care and protection having been entrusted to me
Now take two asprin, and reply in the mourning.
Doctor Chrisisall
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Originally posted by RiveR6213:
Quote:
The answer to your question is no. I don't believe it’s possible for my past feelings/outlook on life/death could return or perhaps be more evenly balanced.
OK I understand that... I think it can but I could be wrong.
Quote:
It's also very easy to see how a person like me is going to end up. You take what you see now and extrapolate. A blind person can see it.
I don't think such things are so cut and dry River
- but assuming they are fair enough. I guess there is nothing wrong in seeing where you're going.
Quote:
The safest thing for me to do is keep myself safe and try to limit my exposure to other people. Don't make any close friends and stay the hell out of committed relationships. Avoid human contact at all costs, and keep everything superficial. I think if I do this everything should be okay.
With this I agree - it probably is the safest thing to do. In my past, I would have agreed with you whole-heartedly too.
Quote:
Hanging around those weird Christians a few months ago really made me want to lock myself away as fast as possible. They were a shock, but they were nice, and they really wanted to be friends. I had to get away from them. Friends have expectations of you. I don't want anyone in my personal life to have any expectations of me, and I don't want to have expectations of them.
Actually River here is where I disagree with you more than at any other time. Personally real friends shouldn't have expectations of you. That's kind of the point of really good friends, they take you for what you are. I will openly admit here that I am extremely lucky with a couple of my best friends - I have two in particular who are like this. They take me just as the: awkward, opinionated stubborn, short, curly, haired bugger that I am, and I ,in turn, take them for what they are: faults aplenty!
Quote:
I'm 44 years of age. I've lived long enough to see how the game of life is played and my role in it. As far as I'm concerned, the game isn’t worth playing because the rules are too weird, and I'm tired of all of it anyway. I can't commit suicide because I tried that already and I have a stiff shoulder that's healing pretty well along with some pain as a reminder that I'm an idiot.
Y'know when I was 14 I had life figured. When I was 21 I had re-evaulated it and summised it was
Since then and I'm now 35, I've jumped from great to bad so many times I've lost count. Thing is I know when I'm 55 I'll have summised life in an altogether different way... And so it goes on. (On a slightly side note, and I'm sorry about this, but have you considered living in a different country/society? I only ask because I found sense of a sort in the Caribbean. I know that sounds like some kind of idealistic pipedream. But a stint around different people and culture often does the trick. Or at least it did for me.)
Quote:
So the next thing for me to do besides self-termination is isolation. I've got maybe another good 20 years left so I think I can hide out for that whole time. It’s not like I left anyone around who would miss me. I made certain that there wouldn’t be any people who missed me.
:(
Quote:
I am proud of the apathy that I have regarding other people's death. To not need people is a freedom that a lot of folks really don't know about. It’s like being unchained.
I understand this 100% I'm a big fan of isolation. I occasionally do this, but with no long term commitment of course. And that's maybe how it works for me, as an occasional panacea.
Quote:
Oh well, I'm rambling.
No problem... I like discussing such things.
Ric
www.cirqus.com
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