I wonder if we have the option of sticking around for awhile after we die. There are some people I would like to haunt.
I believe if any such thing is true, it is more in the vein of an imprint that is left than actual staying behind. Like the footprints left on the Moon.
When faced with your own mortality would you fear it or embrace it?
It is natural to fear death. Panic, however, is not required, though could occur based on circumstance. Death itself is natural but the circumstance in which it occurs may not be.
Any thoughts on "The Death with Dignity Law" that enables terminally ill people with six months or less to live to opt for a quick physician assisted death as opposed to a natural death or a starvation induced death while being kept asleep?
People should have the right to choose. We choose to end other animal's sufferings, but we can't make that choice ourselves? What kind of fuckery is that? It should be done in a way that is as humane and quick a way as possible though. Starvation seems barbaric, but if the person is comatose that is quite a grey area. There are better methods.
Would you go out guns blazing, take a more conservative approach, run through a bucket list, or?
Highly circumstantial. Given a terminal illness, definitely some sort of bucket list. Given a no win situation in a battle or something, definitely guns blazing. Otherwise, I'm happy to go quietly and peacefully.
What are your beliefs about where we go after we die? To an afterlife of sorts, in the ground pushin' up daisies, reincarnated, etc.?
No idea. I've died before and seen the afterlife so I absolutely believe there is something "beyond" but how that all works... no clue. My best guess and the thing that makes the most sense to me is that it has a lot to do with our perception of time. Time is infinite. Our human journey is a blip of infinity, even assuming we are reincarnated thousands of times, we are just a blip. We hugely underestimate our insignificance in the face of infinity. Our molecules gathering and separating in an infinite number of possible ways, becoming new things, becoming everything and nothing. What even is an after... is it a parallel time or no time, or the end of time or all of time? Who knows these things.
From the standpoint of being a person left on the planet, I would like the opportunity to say goodbye. From the perspective of the person leaving the planet, well, I would also like the opportunity to say goodbye. But that's just me.
I was reading a very interesting article about when people die. It implied that people left when they had finished everything they had to do in this particular life. Maybe the folks who linger have more to do in their life, and the ones who leave us too early did what they came here to do in a short amount of time. Children die. It's hard to wrap your head around that.
Or perhaps it is all part of a larger process. Parts of us rebel and remain for a time, or have some other part to play that involves being a ghosty ghost.
I like the idea of a celebration of a persons life as opposed to a funeral. I recently saw a movie about a woman who was dying and she planned her own funeral, she said, "I'm going to put the FUN back in funeral". She threw a party that was a wonderful celebration of her life. It was for the people she was leaving behind.
Hell yea.
Then there is the concept that death and dying does not have to be physical. Parts of our life or personality can die many times in a lifetime.
Indeed. Not only that but our physical cells die en masse, yet somehow we do not ever entirely lose ourselves.
Do you perceive death as final, or the beginning of a different journey, or both, or something else?
It is final. There is finality. To what end is the question. Humans will go on for a time but we will also one day have an end. Will there at that point be a new us? A new me? Or will I remain in some other place/time forever? What is forever?
