Dead Sure!

Modern Times
Dead Sure!
By Abhay Mangaldas
Hey Vish, when you are ‘absolutely certain’ about something, why do you use the phrase ‘Dead Sure’?
Because nothing in life can be more certain than death? Yikes, that sounds macabre!
Isn’t that paradoxical? On one hand, we find certainty to be comforting - we seek certainty and stability in everything. But when it comes to the thought of death, suddenly we don’t want to think about it! Why is death such a scary thought? One would imagine that the uncertainty of life would be scarier than the certainty of death?!
I think it is the fear of the unknown, of what comes after death that is we find scary not death itself.
By that count, thank god babies don’t remember their time in the womb - can you imagine the anxiety they would feel just before birth?! The anxiety of being born could not be very different from the anxiety of dying!
I am told that the process of birth is, in fact, the most traumatic experience we ever go through!
Why, even for the mother it is! I believe no other pain in life is comparable to delivery pain – the pain of creating a life!
Maybe that’s why its called ‘labour’?
And what about what she goes through for nine months before that! No terminal illness, if it is allowed to take its course, would last longer than nine months, would it?
You mean the process of dying was meant to indeed be like the process of giving birth, but in reverse... a transition from an animate to inanimate state?!
Yes, isn’t that the circle of life?! I think the efforts made by us to interfere with this natural cycle, by trying to prevent natural death, makes it ugly and scary.
That is also because death is associated with sickness, pain and disease. Do you think science should intervene only to prevent unnatural deaths but not to prolong life?
That has to be an individual choice. But there is indeed a fine line between fighting disease and fighting death. In most emergency rooms, people are fighting death. I don’t think this makes any sense. What if the same resource were used to fight disease?!
We’d have more healthier people and less older people. The average age of the population is rising in all advanced countries. I wonder if this is a good thing. It would be different if it was an older AND a happier population.
Religion come in the way of believing that life is just an accident of nature and nothing more. I think our arrogance makes us want to see more to life than meets the eye.
Would our attitude to life change if we thought of birth as the beginning and death as the end?
At least some of us wouldn’t live life as if they are paying their dues for a better after life! "Oh, merciful god, please, please take care of my soul, I gave up my life to serve you… I have earned my place in heaven, please don’t put it in the body of a sewage rat…!"
But even the agnostic and rational beings, when they become old, begin to think of their body as separate from their spirit, don’t they?
All I can say is that I have spent half my life with one eye focused on my future only to come to the conclusion that the only other thing that I can ever be ‘dead sure’ about is that I am alive NOW. I would like to live this moment like nothing else matters!