light bulb in my mouth
Jun. 28th, 2007 06:43 pmWatching Andrew Marr’s programme about Hume and Edinburgh last night, and Hume’s acceptance of his mortality, left me thinking about death.
I’m with Hume on this; my only concerns about dying are of what difficulties and upset will be left for those who survive me and, inevitably, for things I’ll leave undone. I don’t want to stop being, because (these days; it was not always so) I mostly like be-ing, but ceasing to be has no fears in and of itself.
What I have noticed though, in the last year or so, is occasionally thinking that I won’t buy a book or a DVD because it feels a waste; because I’ll likely die before I get round to reading/watching the thing more than once. Something in my psyche is regarding the likely twenty-odd, possible thirty or forty years I have left as being a perceptibly approaching end. This, at least, I’m not sure I like: intellectually, I’d rather just carry on living in something close to the now and, well, just stop one day.
There. I’ll probably get eaten by the cats tomorrow :)
I’m with Hume on this; my only concerns about dying are of what difficulties and upset will be left for those who survive me and, inevitably, for things I’ll leave undone. I don’t want to stop being, because (these days; it was not always so) I mostly like be-ing, but ceasing to be has no fears in and of itself.
What I have noticed though, in the last year or so, is occasionally thinking that I won’t buy a book or a DVD because it feels a waste; because I’ll likely die before I get round to reading/watching the thing more than once. Something in my psyche is regarding the likely twenty-odd, possible thirty or forty years I have left as being a perceptibly approaching end. This, at least, I’m not sure I like: intellectually, I’d rather just carry on living in something close to the now and, well, just stop one day.
There. I’ll probably get eaten by the cats tomorrow :)