It’s the oldest question in the book. One that has been addressed since the beginning of time and still… it remains without answer.
Death is a strange and funny thing. It quite often rules our lives before we even encounter it, and it alters how we act out of our fear for what happens next. So, if in all of human history we’ve never found conclusive evidence and answers to our questions about death, why bother? What is it that scares us so much about the end of our lives that prohibits us from living the rest of it?
I believe that the answer lies within the question. And that is: what we don’t know. The most common fear among people is the unknown. It’s a natural human reaction to try everything in our power to make sense of the world around us and provide logic and reason to why things happen. When it comes to death, though… we can’t do that. Say what you will about it, but there is nothing certain about what happens to us after our lives have come to an end. The fear of nothingness has turned our lives away from fulfillment and happiness, to a mad scramble in an attempt to push some part of who we are to survive the end of our mortal life. That’s why we’ve created Heaven. Humans don’t want a definite end to themselves.
What I find most interesting is how differently people perceive death. Someone— multiple someones— die every single day, and each one has a different set of last words, and has seen something different as they have passed the threshold from this world to the next.
Emily Dickinson’s last words were, “I must go in, for the fog is rising.” While she lay there dying, I truly believe that scene is what she was looking at as she crossed over from the world of the living to the world of the dead.
Thomas Edison saw a very different view of the other side. Edison’s last words were, “It’s very beautiful over there.” And maybe it was. Maybe he was walking into a field of wildflowers, where his loved ones awaited him.
Doesn’t that make one wonder, though, if Edison and Dickinson ended up in the same place? Did they retire to separate Heavens and Hells? Return to dust? Pass on into another life?
It’s all very fascinating how humans cope with facing the inevitable. Each culture and subculture holds its own beliefs and ways of honoring and appeasing their dead and preparing to join the ranks of the fallen themselves.
It’s disturbing and fascinating to take a step back and observe how obsessed we as humans are with the things we have no control of. For in reality, death is all just part of life. People think that dying comes upon us suddenly— sometimes with warning, sometimes without. When the truth is that we’ve always been dying. From the minute we were born, we have a limited number of breaths and smiles and steps and moments to live through and to live for. I think it best that we spend them wisely.
