Of life and death

Of late, when I haven’t been wasting my time on worthless pursuits like YouTube binges, I have been getting in a decent amount of thinking. One of the trains of thought I find myself arriving at repeatedly is perhaps the one thing I fear more than death—

Yes, I am afraid of death. And frankly, I believe most people are. It doesn’t mean I go through every day paranoid and suspicious. I don’t obsess over “playing it safe”. However, when I think about what would happen if I were to die tomorrow, I often feel a sense of disappointment, the sort connected with the image of a kid’s heavy sigh on being told playtime’s over. Or the more shallow (yet close to home) simile of a power cut interrupting your favourite movie on TV. It’s often about “I was just getting to the best part” or “I was going to score so many goals” or “all the warming up I did is for nothing”. Feeling this way is only natural, especially in this day and age of information overload, in which you are aware of all the amazing things happening all over the world. It becomes hard to not get upset about being unable to achieve some of your craziest dreams and plans. While it is crucial to dream big and crazy no matter what, it is as important, if not more, to not forget all that happened to you and that you’ve been through along the way. Everything that led up to this point.

So, although I do “fear” death in a way, I know that once the time does come, in that moment I will have no regret or disappointment. I might not be the happiest of faces, it might not be the ideal future I had envisioned, but I will come to terms with it. To me, the emotion of this whole circumstance is perfectly encapsulated by the story of Portgas D. Ace, and the D.s in general.

Those who bear the “D.” in their name seem to be able to withstand an incredible degree of punishment in battle and only surrender to death when they know it is truly unavoidable. In the same vein is an unusual behavior that seems to be common to “D.”: they are often seen laughing or smiling right before they die (or think they’re about to die), as though they have accepted their fate and hold no fear of death. Observers have expressed shock and confusion at this phenomenon, unable to believe that someone could so thoroughly come to terms with the end of their life.

Will of D. | One Piece Wiki

But I digress. The one thing I fear more than death is senility. Not in the extreme sense of the word, but rather the changes in thinking and attitude that accompany senility. As a side note, I have to say that my conclusions are based on what I have been seeing around me, as I am far from senile (or so I believe), and there are obviously exceptions as with everything. It may also be that these are not patterns at all and hence cannot be generalised, and rather that I am simply being influenced by whatever media I have been consuming lately.

There are two main directions in which the changes can proceed—you start becoming dismissive about things which you don’t know enough about and choose to remain ignorant, or you blindly believe that the incomplete knowledge you possess is paramount and often end up parading it and taking defiant stances. While both are undesirable in their own ways, it is the former on which I would like to focus.

I find it interesting how different people react to the same situation—in this case, the lack of knowledge—in different ways. Now, of course, there is high variability in response and it largely depends on the character and attitude of the person, but I feel that the patterns, considered broadly, can be seen to be driven by a gradient of age.

I have felt that the older a person is, the more likely they are to respond with an “oh well”, as opposed to the “oh wow” more characteristic of younger people. Youth (in the broadest sense of the term) have a great fire burning within, an innate curiosity coupled with a passion for learning about the vast wonders of the world. Most young people who are able to put aside their ego never feel confronted when faced with their own lack of knowledge. Instead, they are intrigued and wish to learn more. This fire seems to have died down in older people.

It is this absence of the Fire and passion to learn, to become the Best, to constantly strive to become stronger that terrifies me. The dismissive and retiring mindset of “oh well”s. This form of “accepting one’s fate”. Old age also brings with it a sense of having crossed some significant point in a timeline. Throughout your younger years, you have vague visualisations of things you will achieve and things you will become. Regardless of whether or not all that is actualised, there seems to be some point in time after which it becomes unnatural and seemingly foolish to be looking ahead. Why is that so? Why are you now constantly faced with the question of “now what?”. What happened to your earlier mind which used to be intellectually stimulated by so many things? I, of course, expect no answers to these questions, at least right now. What I do hope is that continually sharpening my mind and intellect to the point that it becomes an integral part of my being, will lead me safely across the Significant Point in my timeline.

I recently came across the story of Eratosthenes which really moved me in the same way that some cliche shounen storylines do. Eratosthenes was a Greek polymath:

… Eratosthenes of Alexandria, whose nickname was “Beta” because he was said to be at least second best in everything, from geometry to drama.

Paul Hoffman, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

Wikipedia states that he was endowed by his critics with this nickname which was intended to be a pejorative; his devotees called him Pentathlos because “he had proven himself knowledgeable in every area of learning”. Whatever the case may be, it is inspirational and aside from being a wonderful example of how to make lemonade from your lemons, it leads me to a further question—Alpha at something, or Beta at everything?

EDIT (13/07/20): I came across a quote that I really liked:

The first sign of senility is that a man forgets his theorems, the second is that he forgets to zip up, the third sign is that he forgets to zip down.

Stanislaw Ulam