A different view

On Death

I find I think more about death these days. I'm in great health, but at 50 life is on the downhill slide. It's not morbid thinking. Maybe I'm thinking more about life and death just frames the issue.

I've always had a belief in God and the afterlife. If my Sunday School teachers were right, then I only have great things to look forward to. If the atheists are right, it won't really matter.

I've loved my life. I've experienced many unique adventures and met lots of great people. As they say at the end of Secondhand Lions, I've really lived.

There are probably a lot of good years left to me. But for what? And how does it end?

As part of the Joneser generation that comes after the Baby Boomers but before the Generation X, I'm going to be at my twilight at a time when the medical and health care system has been pillaged by the large population of baby boomers. Single, there won't be any children burdened with changing my diapers. I will probably finish my life on my own.

There is I suppose a chance I'll be here when they make the break-through to what is supposed to be our natural life span of 150 years. So at 50 I may just be starting.

But I've run out of dreams. Where am I going? I've left that desire to climb that corporate ladder behind, yet have no toothless and bald grandchildren to reflect on. I tried teaching high school, but the kids are wrapped up in their own lives and don't want to hear the stories of an old man.

I enjoy performing volunteer work and find I can make a difference. But without a challenge it just seems somewhat like rote work.

Am I the victim of Freud's Death Drive, my time having passed and now I'm preparing for the inevitable slip into eternity?

Or am I learning a buddhist lesson, living life one day at a time, not expecting more than the next moment.

Life is great, full of wonder, laughter, tears, of energy. But death, at the end, is the ultimate friend.

posted by don1one @ 7:25 PM