If you're going to do yourself in, this is the way to explain it

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by u crank

It is sad.

Honestly, I feel no sadness at all in this man's story. I find it... well, refreshing, straight, honest, serious. Maybe it has something to do with an attitude I share with Socrates whom he directly quotes with this snippet:

“Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly, and of their own accord, preparing themselves for dying and death. If this is true, and they have actually been looking forward to death all their lives, it would of course be absurd to be troubled when the thing comes for which they have so long been preparing and looking forward.”
—SOCRATES, PHAEDO

All life is limited, we all struggle to find our "solution" to how to deal with the awareness of our mortality, and nthat everything we love and everyone we know, will die, and we will need to come along with the loss we feel over that, until one day we are confronted with the process of our own leave. In the modern West, many people and our whole culture have turned to actively denying, at least hiding death, we avoid dealing withz it, we presume to stay young forever, and we do a lot of sometimes funny, often silly things to give the i mpression that indeed we are young: young when we are 30, 40, 50, even 60 and 70. To be hinest, I think many peopole make real fools of themselves there. And the motivation driivng them, is panic leading them to active denial.. They try to run from themselves, they want to outrun time, ignoring that time cannot be defeated.

And ucrank, I do not think this man expected anyone to feel sorry for him. I think that was the last thing he was concerned about.

Haltung bewahren, den Blick nicht abwenden. Or to put it in the wonderfully laconic words of some British general: "Of course we could have tried to run away - but why dying tired?"