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A long-time friend of the family, retired a few years, drowned last week. He was revived and kept alive on life support for nearly a week, but after thirty minutes under water there was massive brain damage from lack of oxygen, and within hours of removing life support he died. Another friend from a different family, this one my age, has been struggling with an extremely rare form of cancer. Last week they were going to try the last resort, what they called a 'fatal dose' of chemo. Either it would kill the cancer or it would kill him. I haven't heard the results yet.
Things like this get you thinking about your own mortality. If I'm found not breathing with no heartbeat, DON'T REVIVE ME. If I have late stage cancer with little hope for cure, give me palliative care and let me say my goodbyes. Since a strange clinical death experience at age 14 I have no fear of death. There's a fear of dying painfully, but that's a different story. Death itself is not frightening. It's the next adventure, the next stage in the journey, and -- if my experience and the experience of many others who have died and been brought back to conscious life is believed -- a thousand million times preferrable to a human, mortal life. If I live to be 150 I still won't have done everything I want to; at some point this mortal experience will end. That's the way it is. It's not morbid to think about your own death. For it is in the consideration of death that we discover some of the meaning of life. And find the motivation to start doing things now.
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Dont' you wish sometimes that there were more homo sapients around?
