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> Who's to say that an "early" death is not in fact a gift for the living? You've got to be kidding. (A very dark kind of humor, I guess)
by nova 13y ago
> Who's to say that an "early" death is not in fact a gift for the living?
You've got to be kidding. (A very dark kind of humor, I guess)
- virtualwhys 13y agoNot kidding at all. Inevitable death awaits while we throw ourselves into the business of living. When a loved one dies, that breaks you down, melts the ice block of arrogant I-know-what's-up thinking. That is absolutely a gift to the living, and his wife and kids are getting that gift deeply, in their bones -- I've heard it called, eating Buddha's rice.
- cantankerous 13y agoI think you'll find a lot of folks that will think that, while what you say may be true, this is not a good trade. I'd rather somebody be a d-bag and still have their dad than treat me well and not have their dad any more. I think there are viable alternatives to learning more about your humanity than losing a loved one. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying I don't think it's worth losing somebody you love dearly. To each his own, I guess.
- asax 13y agoI'm pretty confident that you have never lost anybody close.
- virtualwhys 13y agoI struggled for a long time with the suicide of someone close to me. It dawned on me years later that for all of us affected (ripped apart) by his death (age 24) that we were given a gift: suffering. Looking back, I left my comfortable box -- dropped out of college, shaved my head and entered a monastery -- trying to make sense of it. That broke me, several family members, and his closest friends in a way that a so called natural death might not do since it was his choice and our guilt.
- ars 13y agoHow is suffering a gift? A gift is something you want, and sometimes even defined as something you want, but don't need. > That broke me That's sad. But perhaps if you had had a more natural reaction, that the death was a bad, sad, thing. And not a good thing, you would not feel broken.
- virtualwhys 13y agoThere's no need to define something that cannot be defined. Broken, suicide does that to the living.
- wpietri 13y agoIf somebody gives you a kit with which you can something you need, is it still a gift? I say yes. Mindless suffering is indeed something of no value. But mindful suffering for me has been extraordinarily valuable. For example, I recently did my first triathlon. The training had plenty of suffering. The race was, in some ways, miserable. But because I embraced the suffering, I've grown a lot. Not just physically, but also mentally. Losing people close to me worked similarly. The suffering was enormous. But so was the growth.
- VMG 13y agoI wonder how this line of reasoning would go over at a murder trial.
- mrexroad 13y agoi lost my daughter 1 year, 3 months, 29 days, 13hrs ago. i understand what he's saying. to frame it in a slightly different way: there's a gift of understanding that has the potential to be far more powerful than the pain/grief/torment of the death.
- asax 13y agoI'm pretty confident that you have never lost anybody close.
- asax 13y agoI'm pretty confident that you have never lost anybody close.
- nova 13y agoWell, that the most horrible thing I've read in a long time. So we'll have to agree to disagree that fucking death is a gift.
- cookiecaper 13y agoIt's actually not an uncommon perspective.
- nova 13y agoYes. I guess it's a psychological mechanism to cope with the horror, like Stockholm syndrome.
- kalms 13y agoFor some it's not a horror. It's grief, and to me grief are welcome. It confirms and strengthen our feelings and emotional bonds. Without death there could be no life, and without grief there could be no love. You should stop belittling other peoples viewpoints, just because it does not align with your own.
- nova 13y agoYou are of course entitled to your own personal philosophy, as am I. That doesn't mean I have to silence my disagreement. And in fact I find that "viewpoint" totally incomprehensible. I can asure you, I loved my mother much, much before cancer killed her at 52. That was not a gift, that was her body malfunctioning and our ignorance about how to fix it. I have no need for death or grief to love or to value life, thank you very much. And I don't keep my mouth shut about this because I worry about the real consequences of that philosophy. At any other moment of human history acceptance of death was perhaps the only sane thing to do, because there was no alternative. But we have now a scientific civilization and we should be fighting it, instead of rationalizing it.
- wpietri 13y ago
- leothekim 13y agoInevitable death is not a "gift", it's a lesson. Santa Claus doesn't off you and your family as a "gift" for Christmas. I've experienced the deaths of several close loved ones. Death wasn't a gift to them or others. It was a reminder of the importance of living life. It's life that's the gift, not death.
- ars 13y ago> Inevitable death awaits while we throw ourselves into the business of living. Everyone eventually dies. This is a meaningless sentence. > When a loved one dies, that breaks you down, melts the ice block of arrogant I-know-what's-up thinking. And it does a whole lot more than just that, and the cost is way too high for such a minor lesson. > That is absolutely a gift to the living Are you crazy? A gift? A gift is something the recipient wants. No one wants the lesson you are offering (even assuming it's something valuable, which I'm not convinced is even true).
- patcon 13y agoI don't feel you have much right to call to the dirt someone else's coping mechanism. Some cry for death, some laugh, and some seek meaning.
- ars 13y agoI'm calling his advice to other people.
- virtualwhys 13y agoApparently I am crazy, fair enough, won't argue with that. I'm not offering anything, when I say gift I'm certainly not talking about a person doing the giving. "the cost is way too high for such a minor lesson", a minor lesson like death?
- ars 13y ago> a minor lesson like death? I meant the lesson about "arrogant I-know-what's-up thinking". Death is way too high a price to learn such a thing.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ctdonath 13y agoI look my 5-year-old daughter in her innocent pretty face and wonder what she'll think if Daddy "goes" early (which I very well might, she almost lost me at 3 months). I envision her someday saying "Do I remember Daddy? A little, he was very nice and I loved him..." I find your sentiment downright cruel. Excuse me while I go cry and refrain from punching a wall. ETA: Fallout from death may be construed as a "gift" insofar as some good may come from something bad, but that doesn't make the death itself a gift. Discovering that the wall desperately needed repair anyway doesn't make punching it, out of anticipatory grief, good.
- wpietri 13y agoI understand why people are objecting to your comment here, and I don't have any quarrel with them. But this was exactly my experience of deep loss.
- adammil 13y agoI don't think you meant it that way, but you dishonor their suffering by using the word gift associated with watching a loved one slowly die. To a highly empathic person, this event is nearly equivalent to the death of self altogether.
- egypturnash 13y agoTwo words. Fuck you. Fuck your sanctimonious fatalism. Okay, maybe a few more than two words. The day I turned twelve, we found my father dead on the kitchen floor. He'd had a cerebral aneurism in the night, before going to bed. No warning signs, he was in fine shape. I sank into a deep, deep depression for about twenty years; I feel like I lost a vast chunk of time to that. I did very little beyond going through the motions of life and not quite being gloomy enough to kill myself. It may be different if you know the end is coming. I don't know. But I would much rather have had a father as I tried to make sense of who I'd be during my teen and early adult years than this so-called "gift". Fuck you, and fuck Buddha's rice.
- ams6110 13y agoI don't know if you got help for your depression, but if you didn't that's a shame. Losing a father at 12 is terrible, but you had a father for 12 years. Some people never know their fathers. Presumably yours was a loving father; some people have horribly abusive fathers. However your foul-mouthed response to another person's point of view is uncalled for. You'll probably say "F You" to me also, but if that's the case let me say I think you need some help getting over your self-pity and bitterness about the cards life dealt you. We all lose our parents at one point or another. I lost my mom to ALS. We knew the end was coming, and it was a long, slow, agonizing time. A cerebral aneurism, in comparison, could almost seem like a gift. Or at least a preferable way to go.
- egypturnash 13y agoThis is not language I'd normally use here. But virtualwhy's advocacy of such a fatalistic viewpoint, and characterization of a parent's death as a "gift", touched a nerve. Fuck fatalism, fuck acceptance of the inevitable. I'm an agnostic, I don't think there's anything else beyond this life, and having it ripped away that suddenly and unexpectedly is a raw deal, not a gift. I don't know if it'd be preferable to a long, agonizing death; I haven't experienced one of those in my family. Maybe you do end up being fatalistic if you have to live through one of those. I dunno. It's been almost thirty years. I'm largely over it.
- sporkologist 13y ago> When a loved one dies, that breaks you down, melts the ice block of arrogant I-know-what's-up thinking. If you think the solution to that way of thinking is for someone to die, that's like thinking the only way to learn about the dangers of a hot stove is to burn your hand on it.
- Helianthus 13y ago... well, yeah? How can one know not to get burned without getting burned? I mean, I don't disagree (though I think you're mischaracterizing his post--he didn't say it was a problem in need of a solution, he was merely saying that death has that effect), but it seems like your example is counter to your point.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago> ... well, yeah? How can one know not to get burned without getting burned? Well, I've never been shot either but I still think I'd rather not ^^;
- sporkologist 13y ago> How can one know not to get burned without getting burned? Maybe, someone, let's say, a parent or guardian, telling you that touching a hot stove will burn you, and you taking this seriously. The tone of his post seemed to me to indicate that he was generally insensitive, and only the death of a loved one could snap him out of it. If he had enough empathy, he would have learned more early on that he should be more aware and respectful of others' feelings.
- Tichy 13y agoWhat's the benefit of being broken down? Not thinking "I know what's up" can also be achieved simply by thinking, no need to die for it.
- cellularmitosis 13y agoThe difference is that when you get broken down you are much more likely to affect real and lasting change in your life. I _want_ to do what this guy is doing ( http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski.html http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski.html ), yet I am still living in the city, writing iPhone apps, rather than living on a farm building machinery. Why? Because I'm still just "thinking about it": I haven't reached a broken-down moment. It really takes quite a powerful kick to get people to make real changes.
- Tichy 13y agoYou want somebody you love to die so you can fulfill your dream of building farm machines from scratch? OK... To each their own I guess :-) What if somebody you loves dies and suddenly you find that spending time with that person would have meant much more to you than iPhone apps or farm machines?
- 6d0debc071 13y ago> When a loved one dies, that breaks you down, melts the ice block of arrogant I-know-what's-up thinking. If you honestly didn't think you knew - or at the very least had a good idea - what was up, ever, then you'd be a complete social wreck; someone gibbering in the corner about how you couldn't tell the difference between a family member who wanted to kill you or hug you. The world behaves according to rules, people do too, and we make predictions based upon our guesses as to those rules. Generally we're reasonably correct with those guesses. That's how the vast majority of the population behaves with varying levels of understanding and faith in those rules and guesses. It's not arrogant to think you know what's up. Of course, sometimes you'll be wrong, and you probably shouldn't profess absolute certainty in your predictions, but growing up should have taught you that fairly effectively without the need for anyone to die.
- mrexroad 13y agomy daughter died unexpectedly just over a year ago. i don't like to talk about this but feel i need to say something in support of the "gift comment": my wife and i often talk of her life and death as a gift to us and as her two brothers. we see imprints of her in the bonds between us that were galvanized following her death. it's not something that words can convey, i've tried and failed many times, but her gift is an unparalleled understanding of life and a strength that has the potential to be far more powerful than the grief/pain/torment of losing her. it's more than just a coping mechanism.