The freedom to die

Death has a terrible reputation, and unsurprisingly so. Death doesn't seem to be pleasent and i am very sure that it must not feel pleasant to die either, especially by ways like being mashed under the wheels of a truck. Plus we lose whoever dies, forever. Yes, the memories of that person remain, both good and bad ones, but to compare such an abstract thing with the literal physical existence of a human being is just ridiculous. Whoever dies, dies. Irrespective of how much you and your community misses them.

Anyway, there is a another side to death as well that makes it even more complicated. The religious or spiritual side. Concepts like karma and afterlife give meaning to death, both in a good and bad way.

Some social constructs and rules are simply ridiculous and if one spends his whole life optimizing his life to achieve heaven and avoid hell, it would be a rather constrained life. I for instance, understand some people not willing to eat non-veg food on thursdays or so, due to their religious beliefs and their justifications of what's right or wrong, and i respect their conviction in this regard. However, i will never let go of a good meal, no matter which day of the week it is. Because, as much lies i have seen in the world, i am fairly skeptical of optimizing my life for a place that might not even exist.

I fail to see any inherent meaning in death. I don't see it as anything grand. I see it as an end of a natural series of events. But this doesn't make me any less human, and irrespective of my logical understanding of death and how well i am able to see it from a bird's eye view, it is safe to assume that i will be devasted by death of anybody i am close to. The closer the person, the more it'll fundamentally break me.

But even then, even after the fact that i see no inherent meaning in it and that i will be equally devasted by it, i think there is some beauty to it. Because something doesn't need to be justifiable to be beautiful.
I find it interesting for a multitude of reasons. First of which is that sometimes, death can be kinder than life. Somebody's death can also be kind to somebody else's life. So it is but a partial argument that death is always bad and evil, and it is our sole purpose to avoid or atleast postpone it to the best of our abilities. I believe, sometimes it can also be relief.

Now, i do realise the things i have said and how debatable their moral grounds are. But i believe them to be true. It's a morally grey argument, yes, and perhaps a terrible thing to point out (because questions arise, like, who decides when death is kinder than life and under which criterias and whether the criterias are morally right, even if they are logically sound) but it is something worth thinking about.

And yes, i have said that i find no inherent meaning in death. But that does not mean that some meaning cannot be given to it. We all have our own definitions of a meaningful death, whether we have articulated it or not. You can see this when people react like "oh god, that's fucking terrible" vs when they say "he died an honorable death", in fact irrespective of the how the person died, the value of the person in the eyes of the crowd can change the reaction. So yes, even if there is no inherent meaning, there is almost always meaning.

And i believe such meaning is directly proportional to how deeply connected you are to the web of people around you and beyond. In fact, i believe, when you are loosely connected to the web of people, in other words, there are not many people who are close to you, you possess a certain kind of freedom to die. The freedom is perhaps of the same nature as when you have the autonomy over what to eat that night for dinner or how long to stay out, but taken to a much extreme level.

But the more you are embedded in the web of people, the more accountable you become for your own death. Your death is no longer just your death, it is also a disaster for your partner, parents or friends.

And I think that's the cost of being so alive. Of being so deeply engaged with people and your sorroundings. You lose the freedom to die. But on the upside, you have the priviledge to die what they call a meaningful death.