It is all too easy to ignore the implication of the following two sentences as we hustle and bustle about our daily routines:
1. All human beings must die.
2. I am a human being.
No matter how good you eat or what diet you follow you will die.
No matter how much you exercise you will die.
No matter how much you attend church you will die.
No matter how carefully you monitor your blood pressure you will die.
No matter how dutifully you shun danger you will die.
No matter how much money you save you will die.
No matter how much insurance you have you will die.
So will everyone that you know.
So will everyone that they know.
And all of their collective pets too.
Death is inescapable and it is an uncomfortable fact that we hide from in many different ways. We dismiss it "it is nothing". We deny it "there is an afterlife". We use intellectual diversion in the form of paradox to address it without addressing it. We have complicated estate planning and burial rituals, but we don't spend time pondering what it really means to die.
What does my death mean to me? Should I expect the time-period after my death to be just like the time period before my birth? What is the experience of nothing like?
1,788 US soldiers have a concrete answer to this most philosophical of questions thanks to the war in Iraq, which came courtesy of Republican leadership.
You hear these numbers bandied about and you lose track of the fact that death for even one person is a momentous thing. It's a pity that so many young lives are being ended for such an unjust cause as the ill-gotten war in Iraq.
Imagine facing this greatest of all questions, "to be or not to be" at such a young age.
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