nmyworld

Once, someone asked me if I fear death. We were at a funeral–my aunt’s–and the question was not exactly worded like that. It was more like, “Someone going so suddenly really makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

It really didn’t.

All that was on my mind were the good memories about her that my brain could stand to recall before my eyes welled too much for a teenage boy to show. The times she argued points for no other reason than to make people think about their beliefs; when she took my brother and I to the put-put greens with her friends; when she sat and watched Xena: Warrior Princess with us on Wednesday after dinners.

Neither did the funeral or her passing make me think at all about death, but about life. The question made me wonder about death.

I couldn’t help note the tone of voice of that person who asked me it. There was an unmistakable tinge of fear underneath the facade of adult strength. This person–whose identity I no longer remember–was afraid of death. That struck me.

Why would someone be afraid of death? Death is the end of everything: pleasure, suffering, and everything between. No matter what you believe–rather if you return to humanity, go to some place your life determined, or simply return to the dust from whence you came–death is nothing to fear. Unless, of course, you go to hell. But let’s be honest, no one believes THEY will go to hell. Hell is something made up to fit the dichotomy of good and evil into an ephemeral/eternal setting.

I am not afraid of death. Nor am I afraid of pain. All pain passes. Sure, it is agonizing to be in severe pain, but pain killers and anesthetics have made the short term suffering before death much more bearable. So it is not the pain to fear.

Perhaps it is the future that most fear? The fear of the unknown, being unable to change the “broad historical forces” that guide their lives; that seems scary. But it is based on the premise that one cannot change their future. There is no destiny, nothing is predetermined or meant to happen. Everything happens because someone like you or I made it happen or allowed it to happen. Destiny is an idea to comfort those who feel they need some sort of guide in their lives. Planning their own life is too hard. Many of us probably do fear the future. Many of us probably are too lazy to affect change in our lives. Death to such people is fearful because they have no control over it; and worse, they have no control of their life.

But I don’t fear the future. I don’t fear death, nor pain, nor the death of a loved one. These are all facts of life. The future is shaped; people are born in pain and die in it, too. The only thing I fear is the past.

Why fear the past? Because it cannot be changed. No matter how hard we try, how many times historians revise and rewrite history, simple facts remain: the wretched human condition is cyclical. People kill each other, create cults, torture the innocent, induce widespread famine, keep the masses ignorant, and suppress the base instincts of humanity (at least, those instincts that the modern period has assigned to humanity) all for a handful of similar reasons: sex, material wealth, ideology, land, economics, sport; choose your poison.

The past is fearful because it is such a perfect indicator of the future that seasoned historians can nearly be called fortune tellers. Tomorrow’s radical idea or method was yesterday’s junk. That same idea may shake up the world this time, but on the reaction it will die just as hard. Post-structuralists and structuralists battle each other over arbitrary differences in their intellectual (masturbation) arguments which read more like fourteenth century canon law in their convolution and overreaching claims. Everything repeats in some fashion or other. It merely takes a careful eye and keen mind to find the small similarities.

Yet, one thing is certain. Once something is set in motion, and one knows how it will play out, all that is left is to watch. The past has done more to instill fear in you, then, than anything else you will ever find. Fear, not because you know too much or that you fear the outcome–fear, because it will be too late to do anything about it.

The past is painful because it tells us more than we will ever want to know about our future. For that, people ignore it and try old ideas with new names, new logos, and new jargon. The pain is watching its ugly path all over again. The pain is watching our world never truly change.