So, which is it?\u00a0 Rage against the dying of the light or serenity in the face of the inevitable and natural cycle of life and death?\u00a0 I was at a funeral and I looked at my cousins and saw what time was doing to them.\u00a0 All of us were proof of the inevitability of aging and death.\u00a0 Each one was a slightly different take on mortality.\u00a0 Some seemed to be aging gently and they exuded humor and calm.\u00a0 Others looked very tired and deeply saddened by how hard the way is.\u00a0 Well, that difference comes of a combination of internal and external factors.\u00a0 Luck plays a part and also wisdom and also temperament.\u00a0 If I\u2019m going to guess I\u2019d say luck and temperament play the largest parts.\u00a0 I mean I guess someone like Gautama could remain tranquil in the face of fate\u2019s onslaught against our loved ones and our selves but most people are not so stoic.\u00a0 We need some luck to keep us going.\u00a0 Even Job finally had enough and wanted a word with the Big Guy Upstairs about all those boils.<\/p>\n
So, is there a correct attitude toward the Big Sleep?\u00a0 I\u2019ve always taken a somewhat legalistic attitude about what kind of deal we get from fate.\u00a0 When I was a bit younger, I used to say that fifty years was somewhat the break even point.\u00a0 What I meant by that was if fate gave you fifty good years you should think that you got a decent deal.\u00a0 Not great but decent.\u00a0 The first fifty years are the best part of a life and with any reasonable amount of effort you can get quite a bit done in a half century.\u00a0 You can raise a family.\u00a0 You can become an expert in your profession.\u00a0 You could even have served as President of the United States by then.<\/p>\n
It’s not really a full lifetime but if you don\u2019t lollygag around until forty you can cram a lot of living into fifty years.\u00a0 So, if you live comfortably to seventy, I think you can feel like you got a pretty sweet deal.\u00a0 I\u2019m approaching the biblical \u201cthree score and ten\u201d mark myself.\u00a0 And even though I\u2019m not anxious to throw in the towel quite yet I can\u2019t see myself going through the whole wailing, gnashing my teeth and shaking my fist at heaven act.\u00a0 I feel it would reflect a certain amount of ingratitude.\u00a0 After all, think of kids who die of cancer or some other terrible disease before they ever get their permanent teeth.\u00a0 That\u2019s where I see someone lodging a legitimate grievance against the way the universe is run.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always been repelled by the suffering of the innocents; \u201cthe problem of pain.\u201d<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s my somewhat simplistic but easily explainable philosophy of life and death.\u00a0 God owes us fifty good years.\u00a0 And we owe it to ourselves (and Him) to use the time wisely and diligently.\u00a0 And this is coming from a profoundly lazy man.\u00a0 No male in my family has ever truly grown up before thirty.\u00a0 We have a talent for floating above the ground for an inordinate amount of time before being forced to finally settle down and get to work.\u00a0 For this reason, I feel like I have been blessed in having reached my age with all of the milestones accomplished.\u00a0 Of course, all of the credit for this goes to Camera Girl.\u00a0 She refused to let me stall her plans and so she had her kids while we were very young.\u00a0 Which means we were desperately poor for the first ten plus years of our married lives.\u00a0 Which means I was that much luckier to get the whole thing to work out.<\/p>\n
So, seeing death and dying is a humbling experience.\u00a0 But it also makes me grateful for what I\u2019ve already been allotted.\u00a0 And honestly, I\u2019m not very excited about ending up a nonagenarian or even an octogenarian.\u00a0 I\u2019m hoping for some very lazy death.\u00a0 I\u2019ve toyed with the idea of starving myself.\u00a0 But I\u2019m afraid I might keep putting it off every time I smell something good on the stove.\u00a0 I\u2019m still working out the details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, which is it?\u00a0 Rage against the dying of the light or serenity in the face of the inevitable and natural cycle of life and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3366,818,1263],"tags":[4788,4754,1267],"class_list":["post-32106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-life-in-dunwich","category-ocf","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","tag-death","tag-life","tag-photogs-corner"],"yoast_head":"\n