How we live and die...

So, another quote from where I can't find (even with Google's help) the sayer (not verbatim but I'll put quotes anyways):

"As a Christian, the way we live is important. Also important, even more so, is the way we die" - Probably a saint)

This weekend's Memorial Day weekend. A chance to honor those who sacrificed their life for our country. A noble thing we did, to have the day off, to remember, to give thanks.

You see the thing is, back in day (like, prehistoric times), people were only concerned (probably) with the basic necessities of life. Being able to just stay alive, to see tomorrow alive, that was their goal. Now, I'll argue its a bit more complicated. Sure basic needs must be met, duh. But there's layers and layers beyond that of things we may not even be aware of (ended with a preposition, whatever). For example, see Maslow's hierarchy. What I'm trying to say is, there are a lot more things now that we have to worry about than just physically dying -- perhaps the most important thing to realize is that death itself isn't even strictly physical anymore.

For the longest time, I have always known that death is more of a continuum than an either/or state. Just like life and living is a continuum (popularized in the famous Nicki Minaj song ft. Drake "Cause everybody dies but not everybody lives). You can sort of die and not really die. Far end: physical death. In the middle, a person can die a more nuanced death... internal death, emotional death, character death. There's incremental stages to death.

Problems fall under this category. Thing like drug addiction, gambling addiction, sexual addiction, etc. These are things that actually hurt you on the inside. You're changed (or, at least, a part of you is changed -- see previous blog on "fractured selves").

Here comes the kicker: how you face these problems is not only a statement on how you handle the way you live -- it's also a statement on how you handle the way you die. And, as said in the aforementioned quote, it's important how you die. Why? Because, just as how people can imitate (out of inspiration, etc) the way you live, one could also look up to how the way you die.

PS: I'm tempted to consider the continuum of life/death as one scale on which one side is more alive and the other is more dead rather than two dimensions. But the idea that we can have fractured selves opens the door to the idea that one can have some selves more alive/dead than the other selves.

Summary: basically, now, staying alive is more than just an eat, breathe, and exercise thing.