When the moment of a person’s death becomes imminent, how do we imagine one “dies well?” Is there thrashing and weeping? Is there rebellion against imminent death or denial of it’s imminence? Is there acceptance? Is there determination or resolve? Does one lash out at loved ones? Does one offer comfort to others? This entire thought exercise may seem rather morbid, but I submit to you that many of us already think this way about the moment of death. I’ve heard people talk about dying with dignity or dying gracefully, but Seneca suggests that living well is the manifestation of knowing how to die well. That man lives badly who does not know how to die well. When we view living and dying as the same process, living well and dying well are also the same process. Living well, then, isn’t separate from dying well. No day, no minute, no second once dead can be revived. Similarly, arriving at the moment of death isn’t the moment when death becomes reality the process of journeying toward that moment is also the reality of dying. The moment she steps onto the Olympic field isn’t the moment she becomes a soccer player the process of journeying toward the Olympics is also the reality of being a soccer player. Imagine that the journey is like an athlete who spends her whole life mastering her sport. I’m no Seneca expert, so I can’t speak to his intention, here, but imagine with me that the journey metaphor doesn’t override the process metaphor. The moment is the completion of the death-process, yet the very next sentence leans into the journey metaphor I used above. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way. The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death it merely of itself completes the death-process. Then, I noticed that Seneca talks about it both ways: Death becomes the reality of living living is dying. It’s a subtle but powerful shift that brings the reality of death from the future into the present. What I hadn’t considered was that “whatever time has passed is owned by death” - that I have “died” for 36 years, already. I had even considered the adage that life is short - that death isn’t so far off as it might seem. We are dying metaphorically, because we’re headed in the direction of a far off thing called death. I’d considered that no one can live a perfectly healthful lifestyle 100% of the time, but “dying” meant moving toward a specific moment. I’d considered the fact that the very act of breathing slowly kills us. I’d considered the idea that we’re dying from the moment we’re born. All of life is a journey within that inevitable reality. We are, he suggests, from the moment of our births, engaged in the process of dying. Rather than the moment, itself, being the event of death, our entire lives are a process of death. Seneca argues that we perceive the momentary event of dying (of passing from “life” into “death”) improperly we have an incorrect posture toward death. This is our big mistake, to think we look forward to death most of death is already gone, whatever time has passed is owned by death. death, we laid them on top of each other? What if life and death aren’t static descriptions or momentary events but processes? More than that, what if living and dying are actually the same process? Living Is Dying In America, there’s a lot of dualism we pick two things and pit them against each other, but what if we didn’t do that. Nevertheless, that’s how many people view it, but I want to completely reimagine the relationship between life and death. It’s also an over simplification of life and death. If you’re a particularly precise person, you might be thinking that this is an over simplification of darkness, light, cold, and heat, and I agree with you. (Maybe that’s why people are so fascinated with zombies.) They aren’t opposites, per se, but they don’t overlap. Death is the absence of life, similar to how darkness is the absence of light or cold is the absence of heat. DeathĪs far as I can remember, life and death have always been presented to me as mutually exclusive. I invite you to reimagine things with me. The concepts of eternal life, rebirth, new creation, and dying to oneself beg consideration of life and death.Īs I was learning about memento mori, I came across some quotes from Seneca, a famous Stoic philosopher, and they prompted a reimagining of life and death, which led to questions about death in relation to eternal life. Memento Mori and ChristianityĬhristianity often has a lot to say about life and death, so it’s understandable that memento mori found its way into Christian philosophy. My understanding is that it was a common mantra among stoic philosophers as a tool of reflection how we understand death, life, and mortality can have a profound impact on how we live. Memento mori (/məˈmɛntoʊ ˈmɔːri/, mə-MEN-toh MOR-ee) is a Latin phrase that translates to something like remember death or remember that you die.
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