DEATH

Death is a concept that has fascinated man since the beginning of time. You and i know that all living things die eventually. Death is indeed more inevitable than taxes, even though the English saying considers both death and taxes inescapable.

What is death?

Thing is, if I start to give definitions, I’ll type all night long and even exceed the word limit for this blog post. That is to say there is no specific meaning- apart from it being the end of something- or explanation of death or its need. We all have our different theories- and even hypothesis.

Death and dying are not things that we consider on a daily basis. Perhaps we confront death when our own mortality is directly threatened or when a loved one falls ill. Indeed it is innate in us all to cling unto life at all cost, AT ALL COST! We cannot deny our instincts to survive.

Further more, consider the ways in which people get caught up in stories of miraculous remissions of cancer and people being brought back from the brink of death. Our preoccupation with death is so perverse that it is continually reported by the media. Has LIFE afforded as much media coverage as DEATH?

Can we consider death then, not only as a state of being or indeed, not being but also as a form of symbolism? Talking of symbolism, The ‘death note’ is full of symbolism ranging from christian and roman overtones to great literary pieces such as Macbeth, Ceaser and Sherlock Holmes. There are different kind of symbols that stand for different things. A good example is the ‘apple’ which is a symbol that represent more than one thing: Knowledge; luxury; wisdom; joy; and/ or death.

Indeed, death has more connotations than we might at first consider. Take the religious perspective for example, death can in some religions be seen as the transition from one state of consciousness to another and not simply ‘The end’.

Death and dying also raise ethical issues like every other. Consider ‘euthanasia’, for example, and the debates which surround it. On the one hand we resist death at all cost; on the other, we choose to end our lives permanently.

Death is very much seen as a forbidden subject, an unspoken truth until through circumstances beyond our control we are forced to come face to face with it.

While death may be a taken for granted concept, it is only by unraveling its many mysteries that we can see how a complicated topic it is. One that often seem distant but gets one that is only a heart beat away.