Playin' the cards you're dealt
It's not everyone that knows their fate, knows what will come in the end, knows the final image that will fade out of view as their heart spasms it's final sputtering beat.... but I do.
When we were young we all thought we were immortal, untouchable little horny supermen that knew it all and would never die. We'd dance on the blade of a chainsaw if the notion struck us, confident that the sun would rise tomorrow just as it had all our short lives. I knew this as well as any, but for different reasons than most. The image of my ultimate passing was plastered on my mind. Like seeing your parents having sex, it was always there... disturbingly showing me the unthinkable.
Life has a different meaning to those that know the end. The fear of failure is gone, the anxiety of life is made manageable. Yet, within this the highs are dulled along with the lows. Life all becomes a pale shadow of the vision of your demise. There is no sweet without sour, no contentment without fear.
The day I learned of my demise was in many ways the beginning of my death. Like an amputee that can no long run, a part of me was cut away, tossed into a bio-hazard bag and thrown aside. I have limped through life ever since.
It was a Saturday afternoon, as a 12 year old boy I sat riveted by the grizzly Adams-esque visage of Marty Stouffer as he trudged through the forests of South America, when the truth was first painted upon my mind. The large leafed ferns rustled as the camera neared, Marty's soothing voice trailing away as my eyes widened. I found myself there with Marty, my socks wet from the spongy jungle floor, sweaty and bug bitten and otherwise naked.
Bursting through the leafy fronds before me was an Brazilian tapir cow and two calves. I was frozen as she charged, slamming into me and driving me to the ground. My 12 year old body had changed, glazed in the fat of middle age, hair grayed, hinting to me of the time of fruition of this vision. The tapir continued her attack, burring her snout into my belly, tearing into me as her prehensile snout helped to scoop my entrails into her mouth. My intestines disappeared down her throat like al dente pasta in AB negative marinara sauce. Unable to look away my body heaved and shook, finally passing into unconsciousness as the calves joined into the feast.
Locked in a glassy cold stare I sat transfixed by the show within my own head, unable to determine which reality I was in. The masticating thighs of Susan Sommers snapping me from my stupor as my still 12 year old body reacted to the wondrous power of the thighmaster.
That day I realized what was to become of me, how my life would end and how it would never be the same again. Every decision since has been colored with this knowledge. Freeing me from the fear of everyday life while installing the tapir of death upon my shoulder, forever freed and enslaved by this knowledge.
Of course I no long fear my fellow man, and frequent southside ATMs without a second thought. It has however had a deep effect on my spirituality. The worship services at my church are now empty. I feel disconnected from my God as I know the snakes will not harm me and the strychnine might as well be water. Is this faith or knowledge in my ultimate destiny as a tapir consumable? It makes me doubt it all.
Life is full of surprises, for most, and destiny is fickle for all but me. Weep not for my looming demise for when the embrace of deaths sweet snout comes I shall welcome it. Until that time my life as night manager at Walmart will keep me well away from hungry sweaty cows and their young... won't it?
Healthy "denial"
...So being phobic about death might be a matter of being afraid of fearing death.
I can see that there's some value in considering our death. It keeps things in perspective, forcing us to get our priorities straight. However, I think that this can also be unhealthy if not downright destructive if take too far. I've heard it said by those with some spiritual wisdom that we should keep our death ever before us, living each day as if it were our last. Let's face it, if we really lived every day as if it were our last, we would do some awefully foolish things that, barring our immediate demise, we would live to regret.
Contemplating death can strip us of illusions. It can motivate us to live well. It can also strip us of the will to live deeply. Who can commit heart and soul to what may be gone tomorrow? (Sounds like a fear of love and commitment.)Maybe there's something constructive about the "denial of death" (ala Becker) if it helps us live well without being paralized by fear or apathy.
I'd like to say I don't
I'd like to say I don't really have any demons in my closet but the post above might well be exhibit 'A' against me. Other than proof that you should actually take the time to edit before you post I'm not sure what exactly I was writing.
Within the wandering goofy post there are some truths however. That happiness can't exist without sadness and contentment without fear. In our failures we gain context for our successes and our fears define our confidence.
Or perhaps there is nothing to learn within a post about an entrail eating tapir, snake handling and walmart employment.... If I were a betting man...
For what it's worth
http://paperclippings.blogspot.com
Sometimes it is just interesting to see what spills out of ones head.
Actually, this is quite true. We cannot know the joys without the sorrows. We cannot truely appreciate friendship unless we have been without.
AND...you don't back down from a post because some looney gal posts something bizarre on your blog.
Oh, it wasn't that...
Not met as a backdown as much as an excuse for a less than well written post. I hadn't posted for a while and though the initial idea was somewhat structured the resulting post was a bit of a jumble. I found that the editing process would have been enough of an effort that I probably would of not posted anything. So, I put it up basically as it spilled out of my head.
Regardless it resulted in an interesting discussion and in that I suppose it was a successful post.
that's how it is sometimes
http://paperclippings.blogspot.com
You ought to see what I post sometimes. I have had some disconnected ideas come out with some interesting discussions. Most often that is how conversation goes.
very true
LOL
Kelly...you take everything to heart.
Within the truth of pain comes the truth of no pain. From hard times comes the appreciation of times that are good and carefree. From death comes the appreciation of life.
Ernst Becker points out that the fear of our own body comes primarily from this appreciation that we cannot control our own bodies. Our bodies are messy. They have to eat. They have to eliminate wastes. They get sick. They lose control and react to things that our minds would rather that they not react to. But mostly, they die. That bothers any sentient being, and our defenses are few. Every single religion of humans has some sort of immortality drive. That is not the same as the response that other animals have to the act of survival. Dogs are not afraid of death as much as they are afraid of the act of dying. As a sentient race, humans are like other animals in the response to the act of dying. The very non-Darwistic response of expecting...or perhaps, somehow knowing, that there is "something more" will remain quite unique until we decipher the language of dolphins, for example, or we encounter aliens to this planet that have no expectations of any sort of grander scheme.
Until then, all we have are our own "unrealistic" expectations. Woody Allen said that he was not afraid of death, but that he was afraid of dying. That is not so far from the reality that we all live. We have lived this since the first person realized a sense of self and also realized that he/she was going to die. Thus we have religion, and thus we may actually have a glimpse of a greater truth. If we are purely animals and we respond purely as other animals, the sense that we have had in every known human society that there is something more to this life than just living and dying is anything but a Darwinistic understanding. Since religion frequently calls humans to do things that have little or nothing to do with our own personal well-being or survival, then it is realistic to decribe religions as anything BUT a Darwinistic approach to survival of the fittest. How does being kind to our neighbor describe a survival of the fittest? How does facing wrong-doing with kindness look like anything like killing everything in our path that opposes us?
How is it that a sense of ethical behaviour can be ascribed to survival of the fittest?
It cannot. The Old Testament came close with its Hammurabic "eye-for-an-eye" sense of justice, but the new testament surely cannot have the same sense. Even at that, the Old Testament called for a sense of "Justice" that the law of a jungle cannot ascribe to having.
The fear of dying is what calls most of us into our most honest place, and our most honest responses. In this sense alone can I understand the suicide bomber in any place at all. There is a call to a higher standard, no matter how mis-guided that call is. In the west we lost that sense of religious drive in the middle ages, for the most part. In time, Islam well reach a similar point of understanding.
Nihil est ad omnia parte beatum.
Taking things to heart
http://paperclippings.blogspot.com
Yes, I do take things to heart. It probably has to do with where I wear my heart...usually not in my back pocket.
sorry it posted three times.
sorry it posted three times.
just deleting repeat of comment
http://paperclippings.blogspot.com
When I was a kid
When I was a very young kid, I eveidently had no fear of the dark. The reason I can say that in confidence is that I remember the exact day that I became afraid of the dark.
We were at my grandfather's house, and we had had another one of those pleasant, carefree visits that i loved so much there. They had a small, black and white TV set and there were movies on one of the three channels or so that they could get out that way. That day they showed a movie that I later learned is named "The Thing."
At one point in this flick the monster hides behind a door, and as this guy walks past it, it reaches out and wrenches his arm off. I can still see that in my mind's eye with crystal clarity, down to the details of what it looked like on that tiny screen, where the TV was sitting and what the furniture looked like around the table where it sat.
That night was the first time I realized that the room I was sleeping in likely had a myriad of monsters just waiting for me to screw up and expose myself, so that they could rip various body pieces off of me. The fact that I had never actually HEARD of that happening to anyone that I knew, or that I had never been attacked myself by anything like that TV monster had no effect on my new understanding of the universe.
Nihil est ad omnia parte beatum.
Perspective
Now THAT is perspective!!
I envision being eaten alive by a 12' dark green patio umbrella with white fringe. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!
http://paperclippings.blogspot.com
phobias
I found out that you were confused by my comment...NO DOUBT!! So, I have included a blog entry of my own that I wrote awhile back to explain it all.
My Big Fear
So, that is the long of the short...or the short of the long.
http://paperclippings.blogspot.com
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