Death Is A Certainty Of Every Human Life

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” (Mark Twain). This quote from the famous American writer is the basis for what became one of the hardest ideas to comprehend, death. Death has always been a complex term, causing one to struggle with what the true definition is. It is also hard to wrap your mind around what does it truly mean to die. These are the questions we long for the answer. Whether we acknowledge it or not, death has always been feared by many. Death remains an impossible question, one that has been unexplained since beginning of time. Even though dying is a natural, we as a human race still fear it. What can be done to defeat this never-ending battle? According to Montaigne’s “To Philosophize is to Learn to Die” and Cory Taylor’s “Questions for Me About Dying” we can overcome this by living to the fullest, living with no regrets, living a legacy, and lastly not fearing the inevitable. If you want to conquer the question of life, live in the moment.

That’s the thing about death: it sneaks up and robs a person of their life, taking away all of their happiness. People indulge themselves in the idea of fearing death rather than facing it. Death is an unknown territory where no survivors have ever came back to share their experience. The US Army Private, Roy Scranton’s article “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene” shines hope where he explains how fear can be conquered if the idea of dying is accepted. It is fear that paralyzes people from moving toward the idea of death. If people started to embrace the present, they will understand the inevitability of death and start discrediting fear.

Death is the most inevitable and unknown aspect of life. It is unescapable, and by most of today’s population, it is feared in the utmost regard. Our materialistic views and constant desertion of religious ideals has forced our society to view death as an ultimate end. Socrates and St. Augustine’s views on death differ from many views on the subject in 2017, however, for their time, these men had the power to influence a plethora of individuals with their theories. For Socrates, death should never be feared and should be considered a blessing if our souls were to ascend to heaven, or death could be an extensive slumber without any dreaming whatsoever. With

Martin Heidegger defines death as an “ownmost possibility of Da-sein,” in that it is non- relational potentiality-of-being that is certain yet indefinite but is “not to be bypassed.”2 As an ownmost possibility, every human being’s experience of death differs from one another due to the fact that one lives out his or her life differently. Even with the way one follows a routine of waking up in order to eat and carry out daily tasks and recuperating the energy one exhausted in sleep, every person creates a form of meaning in one’s daily encounters, which individualizes one person from another in these unique

Terror management theory (TMT) asserts that human beings have natural tendency for self-preservation if there is threat to one’s well–being (Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997). It notes that we are the cultural animals that pose self-awareness on the concept of past and future, as well as the understanding that one day we will die. We concern about our life and death but aware that it is unexpected by everything. The worse matter is that we become aware of our vulnerability and helplessness when facing death-related thoughts and ultimate demise (Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1992). The inevitable death awareness or mortality salience provides a ground for experiencing the existential terror, which is the overwhelming concern of people’s

Death is one of the most avoided topics because of the finality that comes with it and the fear of the unknown after death. However, there are quite a number of authors such as AtulGawande, Elisabeth Kubler-ross and Ira Byock who have attempted to go ahead and deal with death as a topic and other connected topics.Each of these authors have delved into one of the most revered topics that is death including related topics that come with it such as the dying process itself. Ira Byock’s Dying well: Peace and possibilities at the end of life is a book that looks at the moment prior to death when an individual is terminally sick and is at the point of death. A

Kierkegaard goes on to define what it means to experience despair. Only the “lowliest, least endowed person can despair” (E/O Handout). In other words, the one that abandons commitment to their own life is the one that experiences despair. He goes on to explain that to choose absolutely is to choose despair and he “chooses himself, not in his immediacy, but chooses himself in his eternal validity” (E/O 78). By choosing despair, the person realizes there is a disruption between how one truly absorbs the world they live in and how our perception is used in pursuit of happiness and pleasure. Despair can be understood as the vehicle for an aesthetic person to get back to an ethical life. Specifically, given the right means, the aesthetic person can be more conscientious of the disconnect between one’s absorption of the world and how they pursue happiness. To an extent,

In this sense, inexplicable fear of death can manifest itself in an excessive desire to obtain achievements to counteract this anguish and the person takes an anxious race against time, no enjoyment of one's own achievements. The deep religious beliefs, rituals and ceremonies helped familiar with death. Friends and neighbors accompanied the suffering and the dying and provided support and comfort in this difficult time of the end of life. “Numerous Researchers now for many people believe that, continuing bonds with the deceased is a regular part of healthy adaptation” (Klass & Walter,

By biological logic, we human beings will face death sooner or later in our life and death has its very own ways to approach us - a sudden deadly strike, a critical sickness, a tragic accident, a prolonged endurance of brutal treatment, or just an aging biological end. To deal with the prospect of death come different passive or active reactions; some may be scared and anxious to see death, some try to run away from it, and some by their own choice make death come faster. But Viktor Frankl, through his work Man’s Search for Meaning, and Bryan Doyle; in his essay “His Last Game” show us choices to confront the death, bring it to our deepest feelings, meaningful satisfaction. To me, the spirit of the prisoners at deadly concentration camps, Frankl’s Logotherapy theory of “. . . striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.” (99), as well as the calmness of Doyle’s brother on his last ride, like an awaken bell, remind us of how precious life is, how we should find the significance in every act of living, determine to live a meaningful life at any circumstances; hence, when death comes, we can accept it without anxiety nor regrets.

Fear of the unknown, and fear of what is to come in our lives, has generations of people wondering what will our lives be like tomorrow or the next day. Death is always there and we cannot escape it. Death is a scary thing. Our own mortality or the mortality of our loved ones scares us to the point that we sometime cannot control how we are dealing with such a thing as the thought of death. Why do we fear such a thing as death? We don’t know what happens after we don’t how it feels. The fear of death is different for most but it is most certain to come and we cannot hide from it. For death is just around the corner and maybe it’s will come tomorrow or the next day! We fear not death but the unknown that comes from death, that is the scariest thing about death.

When so much of one’s life is left up to chance, it is nice to know that one can find certainty in death. Whereas life can be moulded to perfection and death is a guarantee, there is no way to tell what one will face following death. There are millions of different cultures, religions, and individual beliefs pertaining to the afterlife, but a definitive answer will never be known. The works of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson express two very unique interpretations of death and what follows. Both Whitman’s and Dickinson’s views of death include an idea of an afterlife, or of a continuation of the soul post death, but where Whitman welcomes the idea of demise without a trace of fear and his overall view of death is more mystical, Dickinson has a negative view of death and, at times, questions the possibility of an afterlife entirely.

Although the author and I agree that the life expectancy has greatly increased in the past 1000 years and medicine has changed, our old ways of viewing death have not. The author discusses how death is perceived, in which she concludes, “Therefore death in itself is associated with a bad act, a frightening happening, something that in itself calls for retribution and punishment”(220). Kubler-Ross analyzed how people viewed death and determined that it is never depicted positively in most circumstances. She felt people never found peace with death itself, typically finding something to blame to make death seem

Death is among the greatest mysteries of the human existence, one of the issues being that neither science, religion, or philosophy have definitive explanations on it. Although Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet explore death and dying, the former advocates for people to be more optimistic in these circumstances than the latter. Station Eleven’s characters focus their thoughts on living and improving their situation to achieve their goals while Hamlet's characters concentrate on dying and how to end the misery of life, as they are hopeless to change their fate. The ability to make decisions result in opposite outcomes for the characters in each text as Station Eleven’s characters have free will and are rewarded for using it, whereas Hamlet’s characters are punished for seeking to control their future. The development of each character’s life is due to their respective text favouring or punishing free will. The consequences of exercising free will in Station Eleven yield positive results because humans can control their own destiny in a world of death, while in Hamlet, contrarily, humans are controlled by fate and have to endure the consequences of attempting to defeat it.

Mortality is a moving and compelling subject. This end is a confirmation of one’s humanity and the end of one’s substance. Perhaps that is why so many writers and poets muse about their own death in their writings. Keats and John Donne are two such examples of musing poets who share the human condition experience in When I Have Fears and Holy Sonnet 1.

Death is everywhere and cannot be stopped. Every day, millions of people around the world die, whether it is from sickness, old age, suicide or murder. “The Fear of Dying” by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and “The Right to Die” by Norman Cousins, are two articles that discuss death, with respect to embracing it. Both articles support the idea of free will, how society views and reacts to death, and the acceptance of death.