It\u2019s something of a cliche to observe that modern society typically avoid thinking about death, and live their lives less meaningfully, and urgently, as a result.
\nOur denial of death can be seen in our addiction to the news cycle. We stay hooked from the fear of missing out on something important . . . none so much as the breaking story that science has finally found the cure for mortality.
\nWe attempt to slip the inevitability of death through productivity hacking too. If we can find a way around the normal limits of time, if we can get more done than seems humanly possible, perhaps we can change our state, secure a bit of omnipotence, trade our finite humanness for immortal godhood.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s the way we dehumanize those who are older and already passed on. To a man of 20, a man of 50 seems to be a shallower, less emotionally complex being. At any age, we think the people who populate black and white photographs lived lives that were qualitatively different, inferior, from our own. For, if we are somehow \u201creal-er\u201d than they, we won\u2019t meet the same fate, won\u2019t watch our bodies wrinkle and sag, won\u2019t eventually vanish from the earth.
\nAlas, we are not a slightly different species than the billions who have come before us. Nor can we alter ourselves to become such. And the best antidote to this death-denying thinking may be found in wandering a centuries-old cemetery. There, you\u2019ll often find gravestones inscribed with an epigraph well-worth reflecting on.<\/p>\n
It reads:<\/p>\n
Remember me as you pass by,
\nAs you are now, so once was I,
\nAs I am now, soon you will be,
\nSo prepare yourself to follow me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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