Living+with+Death

Wajiha Sajid
Professor Grimm Literature Review

How is life to be lived knowing we all have an end? Death, a grim subject beyond many that people do not like to discuss.  It is fascinating as we want to know more about it and question the subje ct how ever we also fear it. It can either halt us from doing the things we want or push us into taking actions to protect ourselves and the ones we love. But at the end of the day, mortality is inevitable. Keeping this fact in mind, how do we then live our life to the fullest? What is our purpose if we will one day no longer exist?

We  often make death sound beautiful and think about positive things. As gruesome as it may be, death can also be painless and peaceful. It comes down to how death and dying affect us mentally and physically. Caroline Morely states in her article that we are not spared any of the gruesome details. The colors, smells, and texture are a far cry from the sanitized version of death which we are all used to. Morely states that the fear inspires and affects out decision making. She further supports this argument as she describes a study performed on subjects asking about their intentions on voting. Results showed that the subjects were more likely to pick a president who would take extreme actions to protect them. We protect ourselves “by guarding our world views.” Accepting death does not mean that it will be easy to live with. Rather, it will help us to focus on grief and make it easier to move forward. On the other hand, Nathan Dewall states that when reminded of death, we tend to spend more time on the positive aspects than the negative.Authors of “Worm at the Core: On the role of death in life,  Sheldon Soloman, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszcynskiremind us  to “grasp that being mortal, while terrifying, can also make our lives sublime by infusing us with courage, compassion, and concern for future genera tions”.

Death is a subject that goes hand in hand with life, ironically enough. Nathan Heflick, a social psychologist, states that as things become more scarce, they become more desirable. This is  the same case with life. Most who have been through a near-death experience shift their thoughts, views, appreciation of life, and the general sense of happiness. In order for us to appreciate and live a happy life, we must focus on the now and not the future. Thinking about the end, we will never be able to truly enjoy the now. Dr. Judith Rich, a cancer survivor, continues this saying that if there is anything she had learned is that there’s  only the now.

 Works Cited:
====Morely, Caroline. “How do I keep working if I'm going to die anyway?” //Motivation - How do I keep working if I'm going to die anyway? - Personal Productivity Stack Exchange// ====