It is paradoxical that it is so difficult to accept the truer fact of life: death, it is an absolute truth that we will all die one day, nothing escapes this destiny and yet we spend much of our lives trying to ignore it. or avoid it. There are those who even hunt down thoughts or conversations related to death.
It hasn’t always been like this. In ancient Egypt, for example, death was an everyday subject; pharaohs and nobles, and even slaves, had devoted much of their lives to preparing for death; it was common for powerful men to design their graves with sufficient luxury and anticipation. : we didn’t think life would end in physical death.
“He sleeps with the memory of death and rises up with the thought that life is short. “Proverb?
In addition, the ancient Romans had a very expressive custom. When the great generals achieved a military victory, they entered the city and were applauded by all. However, behind them, a slave had to repeat in his ear the phrase “Memento mori”. Its meaning is “Remember you’re going to die. ” They didn’t want to compromise the moment, but remember that no triumph is as great as being above death.
The Middle Ages was the time of religious obscurantism, at least in the West; the world was considered a creation of God, and everything that happened made sense in divine logic; death was the setting for encounter with God; physical life was just a kind of introduction to this definitive existence.
One of the most representative texts of the time is the poem “I live without living in me”, by Santa Teresa de Avila. The first verse says “I live without living in me / and I wait so high / What do I die like this?”. How can we not die?” The idea of death as desire is reflected. However, the impossibility of believing that there is an end to human life persists.
In any case, the truth is that death was a totally assumed reality, it was accepted as a fact to talk about, a fact that received a symbolic explanation and for which the human being had to prepare.
Science has created a great unseanthing for the imagination, as it has postulated truths that still endure today. Modernity brings with it a new development of science. Leonardo da Vinci, who was present at the beginning of this period, dared to do autopsies. him, the sacred halo that re around death began to break.
The great doctors and scientists who launched a head-on fight against death arrived, and the issue also became a science-related issue, so one of the goals of the new studies was to prolong life, which was now considered a supreme good. It has also been revealed that humans are an evolved mammal and in which the laws of biology also prevailed.
For the first time, a group of thinkers has discredited the existence of a God, as well as the possibility that there is something beyond physical life, streams of thought emerged that were expressed in this way, but also provided enormous frustration with life. Nihilism and existentialism are just a few examples. Those who adhere to these ways of thinking share an attitude between disappointment and criticism.
The Industrial Revolution provoked seemingly unlimited mass production. The end of history has been proclaimed and an unprecedented technological revolution has taken place. Gradually we enter the world of the ephemeral, the disposable, the short life cycles, which end anyway to start over.
The idea of death was dissolving. The concerns of the common man began to disappear. The reflection time has been almost entirely replaced by working time and the pace of events, which only allow us to think about how to organize the next hour. It is as if death has become a catastrophic surprise, which still interferes with reality in unexpected ways.
The denial of death is so intense that many refuse to cry when it occurs. Try to survive quickly. Get back into the routine as soon as possible. Go back to your usual worries. Pretend this is someone else’s reality, or at least distant.
And what’s the point of thinking about death and accepting it as an inevitable fact?A lot of people wonder that. The answer is in depressions, anxieties or intolerances that are installed as a cyst, not knowing why. Accepting nothingness, death is perhaps an exceptional way to learn to live life. Perhaps if you develop awareness that it all ends, they also seem to make you unique reasons. sense of this day, the only one we have.