Good health is merely the slowest way to die
"Oddly, or not, I find myself thinking about death less than I used to. I thought that I might be kidding myself in my explorations of the subject while my life stretched ahead of me to an invisible horizon. But no. The thinking cut channels in which I now slip along. They involve acceptance. Why me? Why not me? In point of fact, me. Dying is my turn to survey life from its far—now near—shore. These extra months are a luxury that I hope to have put to good use. “To have put.” See? While here, not here. Like a camera situated nowhere and taking in every last detail of the pulsating world."
While I've had a couple of brushes with death, I've never been diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease. But in my 60s now, the future no longer appears endless.
My FB friend (who I've never met in person) Greg Bailey pointed me to this New Yorker article. I'm really not at all like Peter Schjeldahl, except perhaps in sharing a compulsion to write. He isn't a particularly sympathetic person, and neither am I. But he's dying soon and I've probably got a few more years.
He includes one of my favorite quotes, from Samuel Johnson: "When a Man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." While rambling and time-shifting, Schjeldahl's piece is a distillation of his experiences as a human being on this planet and the acceptance of mortality. It's a long read, but worth your time. Thanks, Greg!
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/23/the-art-of-dying?fbclid=IwAR0hfYqwyK5-eMC42QT1u2e82lTopiAdr7uyXq3SgOmRM8NZNZErvYbidBs
While I've had a couple of brushes with death, I've never been diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease. But in my 60s now, the future no longer appears endless.
My FB friend (who I've never met in person) Greg Bailey pointed me to this New Yorker article. I'm really not at all like Peter Schjeldahl, except perhaps in sharing a compulsion to write. He isn't a particularly sympathetic person, and neither am I. But he's dying soon and I've probably got a few more years.
He includes one of my favorite quotes, from Samuel Johnson: "When a Man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." While rambling and time-shifting, Schjeldahl's piece is a distillation of his experiences as a human being on this planet and the acceptance of mortality. It's a long read, but worth your time. Thanks, Greg!
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/23/the-art-of-dying?fbclid=IwAR0hfYqwyK5-eMC42QT1u2e82lTopiAdr7uyXq3SgOmRM8NZNZErvYbidBs
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