Death.
It’s inevitable. Yet we live in a culture that pins and injects toxins into our faces so we can look further from it. Every moment we are closer to death; time is our true killer.
“We moderns have banished death from our daily lives,” said Charles Fischer, who presented today's Humanities Lecture on Enlightenment and Tragedy. “Death can teach us how to live,” he added.
“As a middle-aged man I think about death a lot.” said Fischer, who recently almost got into a car accident that would’ve killed him. It made him wonder why he felt so unprepared for death. He and his wife happened to be on their way to go for a run, what Fischer called his anti-death routine.
“Death used to be present every day,” Fischer said, who was 34 years old the first time he saw a corpse.
On a more trivial note, Fischer addressed his balding head and said, “My own hair was a great loss. In 7th, 8th, and 9th grade I was voted best hair.”
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| Momento mori inspired student art that hangs in Whitehorse Hall. |
“Are there any serious contemporary writers that remind us of our mortality?” asked Fischer.
“Hamlet is about human fragility, weakness,” said Fischer. Hamlet called suicide the ultimate philosophical question. You don’t see that in a modern soap opera.
Memento mori is an artistic symbol that is a reminder of immorality, a form of art that acts as a mirror for us to see our true nature. A skull is a commonly used symbol.
Most people likely experience fear, disgust, and sadness thinking about death.
“We’re all brothers and sisters in death, that’s where the equality is going to be,” said Fischer.
If you ponder death long enough, perhaps you can accept it and live in love rather than fear. What would life be without the contrast of death, anyway? What would death be without the contrast of life?
If you’re always fully alive, you’ll always be ready to die.
Story by Mikayla Henke
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