It is hard to imagine one's own non-existence, one's extinction, one's own life going out like a candle flame, there is the flame, then there is no longer any flame. Well, actually it is impossible to imagine it because one is still there, reflecting on absence or darkness, on some negative or neutral image of non-being, which is no longer non-being just for that reason, that one is there and one is regarding it. But what of hope for the life to come, that we might overcome death? What is the source of the hope, though, why might one hope, what is it that one clings to, that one wants to hold on to, even if one's life ends like a half-finished sent .....
'But hope would be hope for the wrong thing ... '
But what do I think of this. Well, I have no idea, but I think anyone should consider all the possibilities and be reconciled to them. And can one be reconciled to all of them, all the possibilities?
The oyster catchers are back, in the meadows with the geese, one walks quietly along the track in the darkness and they still take alarm and rise in panic from the water-logged fields
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Michael McGhee's Weblog
2 comments:
So wonderful is life (and at the pinnacle of that I place human consciousness) that I think it is entirely natural to wish to hold on to it, even after death.
Well, that is as I see it now. After a long illness, or a long retirement, I might think otherwise.
I have been present at many deaths. My Grandfather at 104 was ready. So was the 18 year old lad, dying of AIDS in 1989 when I was a medical student.
Afterlife, oh how I wish.
... 'But he who kisses the joy as it flies/ Lives in eternity's sunrise'
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