I GROW OLD, I GROW OLD....

ON LIFE AND DEATH

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Valson Thampu

I am no longer young. I am, if you like, declining into the vale of years. So, naturally, thoughts about life and death press upon me as never before.

This has its crests and troughs, ups and downs. When someone dear or known to me dies, these thoughts come crowding into me. For the rest of the time they creep on the edge of my consciousness.

What is death? Why does it terrify us? Should it?

In its obvious sense, death is the cessation of life. Or, it beings our physical life to a close. We do not know what lies beyond.

Yes, we have assumptions and hopes, based on our religious traditions, about the horizon beyond the grave. But they are nuggets of assurance, not nuts and bolts of proven reality. There is no proof in this regard. Alas, we are trained, from childhood, to trust only what stands proven or verified. ?

Now ask. Why is death such a sad thing? I am not, innately, over-sentimental about death. Still I feel an inner vacuum when someone dear departs forever. Why such a feeling?

On reflection, it appears that it is due to ‘time’. It is existence in time that comes to an end. So, religion projects an existence beyond time. Eternity is the thirst of man, wandering in the wilderness of time.

All the same, everyone agrees that existence per se is not a value. If it were, no one would have committed suicide. For animals it suffices to survive; not for human beings. So, there is something more than ‘time’ to our life on the earth.

Time and space are concepts of quantity. The expectations akin to both are, therefore, necessarily quantitative. We want more and more of both. And we attach ‘privilege’ to acquisitiveness in relation to them. The pride of modern medicine, for example, is that it aids human beings to live longer and to postpone death a little more. Progress is measured, among other indices, by life expectancy. Half a century ago, the average life span of a Keralite was 40 years. Now it is 72 years.?So, we have progressed. But are we any better off? Happier? Why is suicide rate shooting through the roof in Kerala?

So, it seems that ‘more’ is not enough. May be, that was why Jesus projected another goal: the goal of ‘better’, rather than of ‘more’. ?‘Be perfect,’ he said (Mtt.5:48). The ‘life in all its fullness’ he proposed, is better understood in this light. In another context, Jesus explicitly rejected the tendency to equate life with quantity. The life of a man, he said, does not consist ‘in the abundance of his possessions’. Our possessions include time and space, which we ‘occupy’, if you like.

When I die, it is my time and space that I vacate. The sadness of it increases, if I do so without having paid any heed to living on another foundation: that of eternity. ‘More’ is inappropriate to eternity. If Jesus is believed, ‘better’ or perfection is. [By the way the parable of the talents is a critique of the quantitative fallacy.]

It is not enough that we live longer. We have to live better. But ‘better’ in what respect? ‘Better’ in the qualitative, not quantitative, sense. We have to be perfect. The superstition endemic in materialism is that quantity saves, or fulfils and determines human worth. It does nothing of the sort. On the contrary, quantity can be oppressive. Think of the oppressiveness of having to live, meaninglessly and barrenly, for a couple of centuries!

The terror of death is rooted largely in the quantitative idea of life. Jesus did not live long. He lived life like a celebration. The sacrament is a spiritual ‘remembrance’ of that quality of life and personality, as I have explained in one of my recent books. ‘Fullness’ is synonym, a metaphor, for this celebratory way of life.

I leave it to my readers to reflect on the ingredients of the festivity of life. Let me only say this, one of them is gratitude: gratitude to God, gratitude to fellow human beings, gratitude to nature, gratitude to life itself.

Now ask: why is gratitude such a rare thing among us? It makes no difference between the saints and sinners, the pious and the irreligious, in the Christian fold. Ingratitude is, going by practical experiences, a uniform attribute.

Don’t think so?

Well…..?

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