Fear of death should make one good human being
Dr Santosh Kumar Mohapatra
Death remains at the centre of nature and human life. Death always remains a mystery, relating to life and morality. Nobody knows what was the past of a person before birth and what shape one will take after death.
The biggest question that perplexes even cripples our minds: is death larger than life and does it annihilate life altogether? Ignoring death leaves us with a false sense of life’s permanence and perhaps comforts us to lose ourselves in the intricacies of daily life. By contrast, obsessive rumination on death, on the other hand, can lead us away from life and dampen and decimate the spirit, urge, and impulse of achieving something in our lives. Death is often perceived as the highest evil: not merely because it sets an end to our life, but because it renders all we do meaningless. Allegedly it is for this reason that we need to do everything in our power to stop the presently inevitable decline of our bodies and to extend human lifespan indefinitely. But researchers use mathematics and cell science to conclude that the aging process and death are inevitable, no matter how hard you try.
When death is inevitable, fear of death creates anxieties, depression in mind. That is why the many religious scriptures preaches how to cope with anxieties, apprehension and trepidation of death.
Normally, creative and sensitive people have more anxiety not because of fear of death but they always think what is life, what happens after death, and why people are so selfish, ravenous,arrogant, and vindictive despite knowing that one day they will succumb to inexorable journey of time .
If human beings will have no desire, ambition and aspiration, they will suffer more diseases and will die early and society cannot move ahead nor we can see various inventions and scientific miracle.
Hence, there should be hope, aspiration and ambition. However, one should try to achieve by fair means. Human beings should sublimate egos.
There should be no room for greed, deceit, jealousy and vindictiveness. One should be allowed to have decent and dignified life.
But that never happens. No other creature is as cruel or as affectionate as human beings are. A human being is tortured, harassed, humiliated and often killed by another human being more. Animals rarely kill humans today. Similarly, a human being gets loves, affection, sympathy from another human being too.
The bizarre thing is that sometimes, those who see death in each moment much closer than others or act on life are found more selfish and greedy . Fear of death should not dampen one’s spirit but should not make one more insensitive and greedier too. The atmosphere in society should be created to nurture, nourish good qualities of humans being unmindful of consequences of death.
The true joy of living, however, comes from the surge in the human “power of striving” that accompanies the acquisition of knowledge, especially knowledge of oneself, the truth of life, and of one’s place in nature. Lives become meaningful when it is dedicated for the benefit of others.
This self-understanding is a kind of wisdom, and it fills a free person with self-esteem. It also liberates a free person from detrimental emotions such as hate, envy, jealousy, vindictiveness and moves him/her to improve the lives of others and treat them with benevolence, magnanimity.