year ago today
I've researched death some and thought you might be ought to read a few things I'd learned.
Let me start with a few quotes.
"Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage."
-Jean Anouilh, Beckett, 1959
"To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they know quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?"
-Socrates, from Plato's Apology
"Courage is fear holding on a minute longer."
-George S. Patton
So there you have a couple of opinions on death and courage.
But I've found something else out. Death and courage can mix like a noxious cocktail. They are the fodder of patriotism and the bane of terrorism. They are the opposing sides of war and the kissing cousins of peace, for without courage in the face of death or any other opposition, peace as a stasis woudn't be possible.
But death, like that of those you love, is looked to like a loss or to others a transference.
My father was itinerant and his death simply another move in a long series of moves. Some of those moves were calculated; some not so. But he kept a pace and anyone who knew him would tell you he had an internal rhythm that evoked his transcience.
And even still, despite his semipermance of location, he was the most solid thing for me in my art, my dreams, my passion and my imagination.
He will not budge from my conscience, my goals, my desires to succeed and ultimately what I could only call my "I'll show them" streak.
And when I die, I will have borne it the entire way for nothing is so permanent as a father and his son.
Let me start with a few quotes.
"Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage."
-Jean Anouilh, Beckett, 1959
"To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they know quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?"
-Socrates, from Plato's Apology
"Courage is fear holding on a minute longer."
-George S. Patton
So there you have a couple of opinions on death and courage.
But I've found something else out. Death and courage can mix like a noxious cocktail. They are the fodder of patriotism and the bane of terrorism. They are the opposing sides of war and the kissing cousins of peace, for without courage in the face of death or any other opposition, peace as a stasis woudn't be possible.
But death, like that of those you love, is looked to like a loss or to others a transference.
My father was itinerant and his death simply another move in a long series of moves. Some of those moves were calculated; some not so. But he kept a pace and anyone who knew him would tell you he had an internal rhythm that evoked his transcience.
And even still, despite his semipermance of location, he was the most solid thing for me in my art, my dreams, my passion and my imagination.
He will not budge from my conscience, my goals, my desires to succeed and ultimately what I could only call my "I'll show them" streak.
And when I die, I will have borne it the entire way for nothing is so permanent as a father and his son.
posted by charliecapen at 12:00 AM
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