The obituary page

 Subject: The obituary page.

What are we to make of life when there’s so little left of our own to endure. The emails will still flood in after we are gone, ringing a bell that can’t respond but ringing it never the less.

Our life span is not fixed but varies according to how well we have looked after ourselves but there is always that threat of something untoward which creeps up and takes over and for all the advances, medicine still plays only at the edges of our individual calamity and it seems that life is not much more than a lottery.

The presumption we build up in our heads always errs on the positive, to be anything else is seen as defensive but when the chips are down and life is measured in months not years, that perspective we carry of 'ourselves' as being here amongst the the things we know must be reassessed. How do we assess coming to the end of our life, how do we slay the dragon of death and all it means to us and to our loved ones. Death is not a moment in time, it’s a realisation of that moment set against all the moments of your life. It’s a recall of the experiences and a reconciliation of those moments which made you a person to be remembered, you hope, fondly. This reconciliation is in the abstract since with death you cease to exist other than as a memory, it’s a whole new perspective to think that your substance is so shaky and that even at your wake people are starting to forget you as they negotiate their journey home. 

Life is for the living unless of course you are a devout believer, then as you shake off the coils of this life you take your place in heaven to serve a different purpose. This purpose  in life has always bedevilled us. Should it be material, or religious, should it be having a good time or one serving others, should it be engaged in philosophically trying to understand ourselves in relation to others or should we be hedonistically exploiting what and who we can.

Success means different things to different people but to my mind success is largely the way you deal with other people. I know this sounds a little Kiplingesque but in the poem “If”, whilst a bit jingoistic, it has many important points to make, as does Omar Khayyam regarding the impertinence of our presumptions. This sense that our individualistic mind set somehow marks us out for special treatment, be it heaven or in someones memory because we take it for granted that we mean more than we are actually worth. 

Most of our actions have been selfish or at least self absorbed, even the religious person has an over inflated view but in reality we are much more Khayyam than St Peter. 

The presence I hold today could be gone before tomorrow's dawn breaks, but brake it will without noticing whether our presence is there or not. 

Only the Buddhists position themselves for this eventuality, only they compose themselves regarding its inevitability by discussing it and our presence on earth leading up to it. Debating the minutiae of life, dissecting the presence of the mind and body as being impermanent we have to consider what happens when we are gone. For them there is rebirth, a reincarnation somewhere on the ladder of life which if we work hard at attaining knowledge of ourselves, we die improved and start off the next cycle of life one or two stages ahead. 

For the atheist the pragmatic view is that death is simply death, it's a coming to an end of life which has little or no importance unless you've manage a paragraph or two in the Times obituary column.