Safety in numbers

Overheard: “Family is everything.” “My children are my proudest achievement.” “He died surrounded by family.” Culture is groupthink. Its aim is to create a fear of being alone. To alienate us from ourselves.

Death at the doorstep

Who will be the first to drive a stake through the dark heart of ambition? Young man! Ambition leads to competition. Competition leads to conflict. Conflict leads to death all over the place. See how swiftly ambition conjures conclusions. And how the mind shuts with a clanging sound and the ability to learn dies at the doorstep.

Grief

In a letter following the death from scarlet fever of his beloved five-year-old son, American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “I chiefly grieve that I cannot grieve.” Later, in an essay, this: “The only thing grief has taught me, is how shallow it is.”

The long goodbye

The hallmark of the human is his desire for continuousness. And his performative grief when that balloon pops.

Enter. Exit

We live immersed in a terror of death. That needs to be accounted for when we examine our own individual attitudes toward end of life. Which, of course, is a complete oxymoron. There is no end of life. Bodies appear and disappear, is all.