light bulb in my mouth
Watching 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 :)