Life is a journey and at the end is ...
No I am not morbid, but anyone who knows me, knows that I talk openly about death. Why not? We are all going to experience it and I hate how it is treated as taboo. It is part of life. I remember when my father died a friend told me about an eastern wise man who noted that in the western world we give far less energy and attention to death as we do to birth. This is not only short sited but silly. But he felt the reason was that if man really thought about and considered death, he would have to make changes in his/her life and few are prepared to do that. Just food for thought.
Anyone still around from this year?
Reposted but slightly changed from http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/10/06/tig-notaro-and-why-we-laugh-in-the-face-of-death/
Animals don’t know they’re going to die. Maybe they realize it in the moment but that hardly leaves time for reflection. Human beings are cursed, or blessed depending on your perspective, with a nearly lifelong awareness of our own mortality.
Now this picture speaks volumes about life and death
Some dwell on it more than others. I remember it randomly, with little warning, and it hits me like a dizzy spell. Then it’s my turn at the Tim Hortons counter and I have to, thank god, think of something else for a while. “I’ll have a medium coffee with one cream. Hold the death…for a few years. I need at least a few more years.”
Mum - what did you do with his head????
Umberto Eco, noticing man’s sole ownership of both mortality-awareness and humour, put two and two together.
Here's some bloomin' life
“I think that comedy is the quintessential human reaction to the fear of death,” he told the interviewer.
WHHHHhhhhhiiiiiinnnneeeeeyyyy - see now this makes me laugh and I don't know why
Our language and habits are living proof of this. If something is hilarious, you may find yourself dying laughing. When something is desperately sad or manically funny, we have the same reaction: tears well up and sometimes flow freely.
See now this is funny - either two old pacmans kissing, a partly eaten palmier, or two happy commas
Our bodies having lingering primal instincts that tie the two together. In the first instant, the body doesn’t necessarily know the difference between a lion jumping out of a bush and one of your jackass friends jumping out from behind the door to scare you. The initial reaction is sheer mortal terror then, if everything is OK, nervous laughter.
In Roman times these would be the steps to your demise
Deep down, there’s nothing funnier to us, nothing more absurd, than the idea that we will one day cease to exist. I mean, really. Me, gone. What kind of dumb joke is that?
Really, me gone? Really? Wouldn't you all miss me?
Stand-up comedy toes a thin line. We spend most of our lives rushing around, intensely involved in the trifling matters of life. When we do this, we forget about our own mortality. It’s a precarious treaty the world shares and stand-up is about breaching it. By ridiculing our everyday lives, comics are reminding us of our own deaths and we allow it because they make us laugh — laughter being the best form of distraction.
________________
Ahhh ... is this what it all is for afterall ... life?
So this now requires the question, for those of us who love comedy, who enjoy seeing the “funny” in everything in everyday. Are we more prepared and accepting of the concept of our individual demise, or are we making sure we remain more distracted from it? Hmm, for me I think the former, but I can’t speak for others.
I love your posts Sara…
Thanks m’dear. Hope your trip in NY is going well.