Q: It intrigued and tickled me Robert when you said, on the Zoom discussion with Jim Newman, that you can just sit on a park bench and starve to death Ha! How did you mean that? It seems like it would be quite a willful act unless one was deeply depressed or very chilled and equanimous about one's existence, unless I'm taking what you said too literally?
All this is so true. And you don't really need to be "old" to ponder the subject of dying. I've been thinking about this since I was a child and couldn't understand why people make such a big deal of it.
Now I'm middle-aged, witness some physical decline as it happens, think about death, and still can't understand all the taboo around it as well as the desperation to convince oneself and others that it's not true, that it can be transcended and it's not going to happen, and so on.
Just like birth, death seems a most natural part of life - nothing to get so excited about.
I am 77. I seem to be alive. Death is my favorite subject.
All this is so true. And you don't really need to be "old" to ponder the subject of dying. I've been thinking about this since I was a child and couldn't understand why people make such a big deal of it.
Now I'm middle-aged, witness some physical decline as it happens, think about death, and still can't understand all the taboo around it as well as the desperation to convince oneself and others that it's not true, that it can be transcended and it's not going to happen, and so on.
Just like birth, death seems a most natural part of life - nothing to get so excited about.