Trust Tommy

Someone with Huntington’s once said, when asked if she’d find out if she tested positive for the disease (you have a 50% chance if you mother had it, and her mother did):

“You have as much chance as me of dying at any time – you could be knocked down by a bus tomorrow. Why should I have to know when I die?”

This got me thinking.

Imagine, for a moment, that you were our Huntington’s patient. Would you take the test? Find out? There’s an equal chance you have it as you don’t.

I have a list (a mental one, I’d never write or publish the full one), that contains everything I want to get done before I die. I do it mentally because you have to draw the line between personal stuff and public stuff. Some people know some of the items, but like the Mafia Don and the members, I’m the only one who knows them all.

One of the things is climb Mt. Everest. I want to prove it to myself that I can. Now, if I knew there was even a 50% chance I could be dead within, say, 10 years, it’d make me get my skates on. I’d do the research, I’d get the fitness, I’d generally mentally and physically prepare myself for it, and I’d do it.

Photo owned by gaab22 (cc)

There are, of course, arguments against finding out. I think it’s safe to say that everyone would act differently if they knew when they’d die. It’s just such an unnatural thing that no-one could know that fact and continue living normally. Their mentality toward life in general would be completely different.

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Death, in all its uncertainty, is life’s one great certainty. From the moment you’re born, except for death (okay, and paying taxes), everything in life is just for now. Death is always there. Death is and always has been the great unknown.

It’s not unnatural to be scared of death. Not wanting it is a perfectly natural response. I think anyone who nonchalantly says ‘I don’t fear death’ is just kidding. That joking is more often than not hiding some deeper uncertainty. Fear is a natural human reaction, don’t forget.

Death is uncertainty. Uncertainty is blackness. Blackness is Nothingness. Nothingness is scary.

We invent ‘heavens’ and ‘paradises’ to make us more comfortable with the thought of death. We find solace in the thought that dead relatives are waiting for us in some place.

As the picture shows, our life is just a section on top of the universe. It existed before we were born, and it’ll continue after we’re gone. Our life is nothing but a section of a song. A chapter of a book or an act of a play. That song, book and play are gonna keep on going after our exit, too.

As we walk through life, we sometimes allow our consciousness to wander off and think about death. For most people, the thought that our life is just superimposed on the rest of the universe is just mind blowing. For us, life begins when we’re born (consciousness, remember, not being conceived) and ends when we die. It’s obviously hard to get our heads around the fact that there’s only this. This is the only shot at life you get.

A man once said that ‘every day you wake up could be your last’. This is the typical self-help bullshit people come out with, and people pay for it. Sure, give it a thought but don’t print it off in big letters and pin it to your wall so that it’s the first thing you see when you wake up.

Despite this post, I think it’s something we should think about it, maybe even go as far as dwelling on it, but no fixations.

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It’s a certainty
It’s going to happen.
It’s all around us.

Get over it. Live your life. Sure, death’s not ‘a companion’, as the Church teaches, but there’s no day but today.

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Let’s end this post on something happy. This song is lovely and summery. Go on, take it with you this weekend. Hopefully it’ll be summer. Enjoy life.