The philosopher Robert Solomon died
suddenly of a heart attack in the Zurich airport on Jan 2, 2007.
He was 65. Ironically he was writing a book about death.
His obituary (by his colleague, Kathleen Higgins) observes:
‘He had lived his whole life, as he put it, ‘under a medical
death sentence,’ caused by a congenital heart defect. …
A person who was given no life expectancy at any point,
he lived every day as a treasure. He saw life as a gift,
and he lived his life with a rare generosity of spirit.’
Apparently Solomon’s recognition that he was, as far as he knew,
always about to die was very good for him.
And yesterday I saw you kissing tiny flowers,
But all that lives is born to die - Led Zeppelin
It’s not a question of whether the death sentence is real or not, but rather choosing to make it a focus of attention around which the rest of one’s life is lived. If thinking constantly of his impending death made this person think he was living a better life then goody for him. Whatever turns your crank.
I speak as a person who watched someone drop dead in front of me, after going jogging.
He had a congenital heart defect, which apparently could have seen him off at any time. No-one knew, and certainly not him. And certainly not me. He was 39.
I was given seven years on the outside 22 years ago. After the first two years thinking I was gonna die within five years it became old, plus my wife said she’d killed me if I died.
Well, we do take our lives for granted, many of us.
We proceed on the assumption that we have time.
That we are all ‘under a death sentence’ is, for me,
anyhow, words, not emotionally real. There is
the ‘dream of life…’
But Solomon appears to have been awake.
There’s a lot to be said for that.
There’s a famous zen story of a man who was chased by
a tiger over a cliff. As he fell he managed
to grab a vine. Below
he saw another tiger pacing about, waiting
to eat him when the vine, which was beginning
to give way, broke.
Next to the vine, growing out of the cliff, he
saw some berries. He reached over with
one hand, plucked a berry and ate it.
How good it tasted!
Once I was riding a bus in the north of India.
As we went through a cross roads a man walked
in front of the bus and we clobbered him.
The driver, trying to miss the man, skidded the
bus into the path of a truck, then fought to
regain control. People were flying through the
bus. We slid to a stop, people all around me
started praying loudly.
The man we hit was lying in the road fifty
feet behind us. We went back and carried him
on the bus, his wife got on too, and we drove
to a hospital and we carried him in.
The next few hours I was awake, it was very good,
then I slowly fell asleep again.
Yes, this was in Proceedings and Addresses of the
American Philosophical Association. It comes out
four times a year. There is an obituaries
section, and some of these are genuinely moving.
This seems to me to be related to the nearby “living up to your potential” thread, i.e. meeting someone else’s expectations or living up to someone else’s goals. Whether someone else approves of me or my life is of no great consequence to me personally, though it may or may not be to them.
I like the Chinese perspective, where you become responsible for the life you save, not the life you take; makes you stop and think about the consequences of saving someone.
I think it’s one thing to meet someone else’s expectations or live
up to their goals or win their approvall—which I agree
is of little consequence–and being remembered warmly
by those who knew us. It’s one thing to satisfy other
people’s standards, another to be spontaneously loved
and esteemed.
I’ve heard people who have recently been in a car wreck lamenting the work
they had just had done on their car. “I just got the engine tuned up, and a week
later the car’s totalled! I could have saved $400 if I’d just waited a week!”
I’ve always wondered if we might feel a similar feeling after death.
e.g., “Arg! I dieted and exercised for months and finally brought my colesterol
under control so I could live longer, and then I get hit by a bus! I should have
been eating chocolate and watching TV instead!” I guess you have to plan for
the future, but you’re always hedging your bets. What a balance life is!
At least I know that if I were to die tomorrow, I would not regret practicing
my whistle/fiddle/guitar/mandolin. Time well-spent, that!
To my way of thinking, things like exercise are things you do because you enjoy them, and because they increase the quality of your life in the here-and-now.
If it also helps you live longer, that’s all to the good.
I am not nearly as disturbed by the thought of having a shorter life as I am of the thought of having a life of misery (regardless of length).
I guess there could be something to living everyday like it was you last. But I think the reality is that much about living is fairly mundane and involves the care and nurturing of people other than yourself including sometimes those who really have an extremely limited amount of time left to live. Worrying about your own life in this regard seemed to me to be counterproductive, and doesn’t seem to help in taking care of those mundane aspects of living. I realize, of course, there are individuals who may need imminent threats/danger, higher level of anxiety to focus and perform better in life.
He saw life as a gift, and he lived his life with a rare generosity of spirit.
There is certainly no need to be given a death sentence before you can live your life this way. Irena Sendlerowa was a perfect example of this, she died Monday.http://www.irenasendler.org/
In 1991, my Nissan Sentra had a recall placed on it, the seatbelts needed to be fixed. A few weeks later, the car was totaled by a transit bus. The seatbelts held. How grateful I am that we took it in the be fixed! I probably would have been killed if they had not worked properly.
I remember seeing a program on a woman, an artist, who had suffered a pontentally deadly illness. Later on, she drew large scale room sized pastel painting based on the joys of life. It was displayed for a few weeks. At the end of the showing, she slowly scraped and washed the whole work away. Only a moment in time.
Quite moving.
Last June I wrecked my motorcycle. Laying along the side of the road for about 20 minutes before the ambulance came, I thought I was going to bleed out and die. I didn’t like that idea, but what you gonna do? So I thought to myself “if I live through this, I’ll live each day to the fullest.”
So after surgery and a few months in a hospital bed, I started getting around again (obviously I didn’t die - yahoo!). Now I’m nearly back to normal. My day to day life is pretty much what it was before the accident - only slower. I came to the realization that, for me, living life to the fullest is simply getting through the day and experiencing the little things: cutting the grass, feeding the rabbits, taking my grand-daughter to ball practice. That’s a good life. Oh, and no more bikes.
I know this post isn’t exactly on topic, but it’s close.
One of my Dad’s favorite sayings was, “No man ever wished from his deathbed that he had spent more time in the office.” And yet, he was a very dedicated (office-based) worker, and a very successful and responsible man. I was always amazed at his natural Zen perspective and sense of balance.
My perspective and attitude are always in bad need of adjustment, but at least I know how I’d like to be.
There’s nothing in ‘live every day like it was your last’ that means
you worry about your own life or that you fail to love others.
Being awake, not walking around dreaming about the past
or the future or what you should have said to so-and-so
six years ago, is a good idea for lovers. If I knew I would
die in an hour I would be more inclined to spend it
with people I love.
Of course nobody says you need a death sentence to live
this way, the idea is that it would help.
There is a saying: Zen is everyday life. What’s mundane
is a matter of perspective. In Buddhist retreats you sit
and watch your breathing, which becomes boring
as boring can be. Then the teachers tell you to
attend to each breath as though it was your last,
and the breath stops being mundane.
There’s a line from a Flannery O’Conner story:
She would have been a good woman if she was going to
die the next moment all of her life.
