Death's Warm Embrace

     Yesterday, as I was signing up for a BJs membership to replace the Costco one I terminated after they let their Left-wing politics mar an otherwise good business, I was having a discussion with a friend about death. Yeah, I know, sounds like a great Sunday afternoon. But the discussion was not so much about our deaths, but how our culture has become less mature in how we deal with death in general. For as technologically advanced as we have become as a society, we have regressed on the issue of death to a level of immaturity not even held by our ancient ancestors.
     People of other eras in history would lose a loved one, grieve for a respectful amount of time, and then go on living their lives. We, with all our trappings of modernity, lose a loved one, grieve an excessive amount of time, think of ourselves as victims for having gone through this basic eventuality of life, and sometimes spend thousands of dollars on therapy. Our forbearers, while they never forgot their departed loved ones, would turn their grief to the essential task of survival.
     Therein lies the crux of the matter, our abundance of free time to dwell on these common events of life experienced by everyone who has ever lived, or will ever live. No one escapes this earth without dying, and without experiencing the death of those close to us. But many have turned this normal occurrence into an opportunity to gain sympathy as a victim. This is a result, I think, of the ideology of the Left that has venerated victim hood and has implemented a reward system for personal weakness.
      The hero worship of victims promulgated by the Left, in combination with less of our energy and thought having to be spent on survival, has lead to the normality of death being treated as an anomaly. When one considers that the average American spends just under 40 hours a week working to provide for themselves and their families, according to the Labor Department, it is no wonder we have become neurotic about death.
     Additionally, the ever increasing number of hours that the average American spends watching TV, has overtaken the number of hours they spend working. This has contributed to the lines between fiction and reality being blurred in the minds of many. I am amazed and shocked, living without any TV except DVDs, how much of some people's entire life experience is wrapped up in the fictional lives of those they watch on television. This, in my estimation, has lead to a skewed sense of reality in these persons, who then are unable to shoulder the typical burdens of life, like death.
     Death has become the ultimate pass into the club car of sympathy on the train to victim hood for those left behind by the decedent. I have news for those victims, we are all going to die. Death is immaterial compared to how we all spend our time while on this earth, however many years we are granted. Grieve for those you have loss, and then set about the task of making your life, the lives of those around you, and your piece of the world a little better before you too must leave it and head towards the enlightenment of death's warm embrace.