|
Tuesday, 12 September 2006 18:39 |
 | | Marc Mullinax |
"I am not urging you to prepare for the next life, but to use well this, the only life that is given you, in order to face, when it does come, the only death you will ever experience. It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying, to succeed later in doing it properly just once."
ÇƒÓ Umberto Eco
ï
MARS HILL ÇƒÓ This column, and next weekës, will focus upon three words: denial, fear and death. In this psychological trinity, only death is real.
Iëve
always wondered how I would first touch upon the shores of death in my
life-boat. The day JFK was assassinated was the day I realized that one
day, I, too, would die. I remember thinking, "On that morning of Nov.
22, Kennedy woke up, ignorant he would be a dead man before lunch."
The wondering
continues for me, but recently death gave me unexpected hearing of its
stark reality. Death whispered to me, using my doctorës voice: "You
have prostate cancer."
We go all over
the world, and use passports willy-nilly to arch up into the sky, cross
oceans and experience life differently. But we hardly ever go just six
feet under, in thought or in deed. This one lack does three things.
1. It impoverishes all the rest that we do and call important.
2. Our death-date sucks up meaning from all we hope to do, BUT
3. Death also provides depth to all that we do and are. Life above the grave must include integration of the grave into life.
Yes, death
sucks. It stimulates bad religion and feeds needless fear. Death seems
to extinguish love, cut plans short and cripples greatness. But when
confronted with it, life becomes somehow more than we might have
thought. Some rise to the challenge, some succumb to its terror.
The world has
signed a pact with death; it had to. The terms are clear: if you want
to live, you have to die; in order to experience freedom, you must be
subject to the vagaries of time, and he goes nowhere without his hungry
dog death.
One day I will
belong not to my body but entirely to memory, and it will not be my
memory to which I belong. Death, then, seems first about giving up
control. Control-freaks may have the hardest deaths imaginable.
So I suggest the
practice of dying, learning that death is not the danger we have
painted it, but the real lure in life, the shark chum by which we
attract the necessary dangers hovering around us in order to live.
Live then as if
you were dying, for in fact you are. And we live among people that are
also dying, however in denial of that datum they may be. The barriers
that block our attention to our deaths block also entrance into life
authentic: These barriers are created of fear and denial.
However, by
embracing the inescapable, one can lose fear of it. Hereës the secret
about fear: itës an absolutist. With fear, itës all or nothing. Itës
either a bullying tyrant, ruling your life with stupid, blinding
omnipotence, or else you overthrow it, and its power vanishes in a puff
of smoke. There is no middle ground.
And another
secret: this column against fear has nothing to do with "courage."
Overcoming fear is driven by something quite uncomplicated: the simple
need to get on with life. I stop being afraid when I remember my time
on earth has always been limited. Why waste time for direction-less and
purpose-less drivel?
Further and highly recommended reading: Ernest Beckerës "The Denial of Death."
ï
Dr. Marc S.
Mullinax, chairman of the philosophy and religion departments at Mars
Hill College, can be reached at mmullinax-at-mhc.edu.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
