How are you doing?
My grandfather died.
Well, you know kid, sorry, but I got my
own problems, my best friend died. Do you think there's a chance
we're talking about the same person?
You know we are.
Listen, can I ask you something?
Sure.
Between the time he had the heart
attack and the time he died, do you think he would have been in a lot
of pain?
You know, that's exactly the sort of
question he would have asked. They’d have sedated him.
Do you think he was scared?
I wasn't there when it happened, I
wasn't there… But you know what would console you? Singing a
song, got my guitar right here, let me just …
No I don't think so.
No?
No! Why, when of talking about my
grandfather's death, your best friend's unexpected passing, would I
want to sing a song?
I just thought an upbeat song might
move us past this point.
But I want to talk about it, not forget
it.
Let me call in some of my friends,
people you don't know, good people. They know how to play guitar as
well, and if we get the right ones we might have a bit of a jam.
Could we talk, instead.
If that's what you want.
My grandfather, I didn't really know
him, not like you did. But I feel this immense pressure to attach an
emotion, any emotion, to his passing. But I don't feel anything,
though I can understand, intellectually, my loss. My loss, a selfish
focus on unexperienced opportunities, not his. No longer can I
receive his smile, and yet it isn't his ending I miss. But, ever
since it happened a week ago, I can't help, but feel an pervasive,
dispassionate dread. Every night before sleep a single thought
passes through my consciousnesses, “Someday I will be dead. Sooner
rather than later, for even a hundred years is a trivial time.”
What you're saying, it's perfectly
normal, if anything's normal. There are many ways of reacting to a
death, and it will fade, the pressure and the anxiety.
But should I want it to? This
knowledge which impinges upon my consciousnesses, is it a curse like
one initially supposes, or a blessing, a tearing away of the veil of
ignorance? A constant reminder, like a gadfly, to spring one to
action.
So, you're inspired to seize the day,
live life to the fullest, all that?
No, it isn't quite that, I don't know
if I have the self-knowledge, the understanding, the vocabulary to
explain.
No?
No, no. I mean, obviously everyone
should live in the manner which matters to them, but I can't do any
better than this facile, pathetic aphorism.
It's ok.
Do people think about it much, when
they aren't distracting themselves?
It's not as if humanity, in the
capacity of its greatest minds, hasn't extensively explored the
possibility, the meaning, and the result of death. But conclusions
are hard to reach, and as for what the mass of individuals believe,
or how often they consider it, I know of no survey. But, eventually
all conversations, like life, must end. Eventually one has to return
to the mundanity of living; eating, sleeping, working, playing. One
can't spend all of life considering one's death.
Maybe it's better to pass the question
by. Sometimes, death seems an atrocious horror with which we are
marked at birth, aggravated for some by the painful tortured of
brutal suffering, sourced from natural causes or their treacherous
sisters and brothers, and those who receive a swift, silent death
should consider themselves lucky.
Are you afraid of death or suffering?
Did you listen to what I said?
I don't think you realize the
difference.
And I think you accord to my youth, the
same misguided, disdainful belief, that young wounds are only
superficial and trifling.
But, there's a difference, and anyone
with a thimbleful of experience can see it.
Here's an elder, conjuring forth the
ultimate expression of a shutdown.
The agony of fresh loss can afflict
even the most youthful heart. But the trauma of pain is a unique
experience mostly avoided until the end.
If only you could continue the
conversation without condescension. I want to talk of a solution.
We left that behind, with living life
to the fullest.
Why shouldn't one avoid both agony and
ending?
But there are other solutions as well.
Meaning, whether, virtue, happiness, pleasure, acceptance, oblivion,
can provide what you need.
It's obvious some are aiming for a
higher achievement, immortality.
Life in, or as, a machine? A fantasy
for the wealthy to chase, a opiate offered for the deluded ninty-nine
percent, who will never feel the brush of an electron. Even if
humanity could achieve potential immortality, by reducing itself to
computers, continually transferring one's consciousness, it's
difficult to imagine the ability to achieve invincibility.
Everything decays, whether synthetic or skin.
At least one needn't agonize about
pain. But I think you discard this solution too swiftly.
One can imagine the trauma of
transfiguring to the confines of an artificial reality, the sloughing
off of the skin, to transcend any anguish formerly conceived of by
mortal mind.
Those who have already aged, have made
friends with death, as one comes to like their blemished body or the
inferior companion they met in elementary, but youth still rebels
against acceptance and acquiescence.
Then keep rebelling against concession
to the common answers and outcomes. But don't renounce endurance.
What?
You and I are going to need quite a bit
of the latter. What say, we take this opportunity to forge a bond.
We'll meet once a week to discuss whatever is one the mind. Not the
frivolous, contemptible nonsense people spout, faux-earnestly about upon every
occasion, but the stuff that commands all the mind's faculties.
There won't be any concealing, or deception, or peremptorily
pacifying. But at the end, as everyone must, we'll relax our reason.
We'll celebrate what we have with music, friends, entertainment, and
food. And people can discuss that which is useless without wonder,
but made better by it.
I think I see the outline of life in
this compromise. And until I find any better answer, I accept.
Note: The first one hundred and one
words, (up until the first ellipsis) are taken from Season 3, Episode
6 of The Newsroom.
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