How do I view Death?

November 4 2007


Ms. Jeniffer S. Francisco




Several times I've been at the crossroad of life and death. Thank GOD He give me a chance to live. I am not afraid to die but what hinders me are my children. From my readings I quote " The last inscrutable limits is the ultimate boundary of death which has been strikingly neglected in the literature of modern ethics, but which is a constant theme of existentialist literature. This has strengthened the impression that there is something gloomy and morbid about this philosophy. But it all depends on the attitude we take towards everyday life. If this life is sound and healthy,there is something in this objection. But the existentialist thinkers do not agree.they offer evidences to show that this life is governed by ambiguity and confusion . these are manifested in a loss of self and distracted care of things. This everyday life misunderstood its limits and evades its real responsibilities. It is not sound and healthy. The existentialists find this judgment strikingly confirmed by a close study of the common attitude towards death.
Death is an evident limit that every person must face.But in everyday life, we find ourselves constantly evading and suppressing the thought of death. It is not a subject for polite conversation. When unavoidable, it is referred to in indirect and euphemistic ways. Great pains are taken to conceal his approaching death from the stricken person . Many devices are used to evade this inescapable fact.
One admits that this death is certain, but when it will come is indeterminate. these are the clear-cut. But one introduces an interesting qualification he says; Yes, it is certain sometimes, but not right away. This is a significant dilution of the facts. His immediate cares and plans are safeguarded. His life is not projected to the very end, but only up yo the certain point. This segment is perhaps exempt from death. The test is vague and confused. Up to a certain point,uncertainty is similarly excluded. after awhile, yes uncertainty. But not for a little while. This is clearly an evasion, for the evident truth is that death may come at any moment. certain moment must be protected from this future. One thinks of his life as a series of successive events, one following after another. Death itself is a last event which will finally be there but maybe for sometimes postponed. these equivocations are false and unauthentic, a flight from the boundary of death.
The authentic person does not run from any fact. He meditates upon it-not as a finished event that will sometime be there, but as the end that lies ahead of him in terms of which he can project his existence as a whole. He knows that it is certain, and that it may strike at any moment, even the next. He does not try to dilute these facts. How will this influence him? Will it not drive him away from all postponement, and lead him to recognize the importance of this very moment? Must he not act now in such a way that should death strikes, His whole life may have some total significance? will he not, then, try to gather himself together and strive to concentrate the4 whole of his being in decisive action here and now? As the existentialist sees it, this is not morbid, but rather the way of integrity and freedom.
So far we have considered certain external phases of human being; being-in-the-world, with others and the final limits that restrict this being. Now we must turn again to the constitutive phases of this being; awareness, care, time, and history. these also maybe maintained in a authentic manner. I strongly believed that life is a gift and death is certain, it is not something to be afraid of but something to prepare for. So while I'm living in this world I make the best because when death comes I have nothing to regret for.