In Death and Dying (again)

[foamy1946]

My mother passed away in 1969 from a brutal battle with breast cancer for a number of years. Initially, the cancer was contained and in remission, but a year or so later, it returned. having suffered for many years as a result of the chemo and radiation treatments of that era, she said no more, let nature take its course.

My mother and I were very close. What made her passing so painful, was I was kept in the dark about her condition most of the time. I was away at college for a year, then the Army for two years, and was not informed of the seriousness of the cancer.

The pain I have carried all these years, stems from the fact that I had a summer job away from home, as she was dying and not told about this. Out of the blue one Friday, and on a whim to come home for a few days, I drove eight hours back to SoCal. I arrived home and my mother was not there. I asked my dad what was going on. He said she was in the hospital but did not say she had so little time left.

So the next day, Saturday, I visited her...she was 51 year old, but looked like eighty something. I was stunned. I saw her the next day, and no one told me she had mere days to live. I told her I would come home next weekend to see her, and left the hospital around 7 pm to drive back to my job. She died six hours later.

 

[130lights]

My mother passed away in 1969 from a brutal battle with breast cancer for a number of years. Initially, the cancer was contained and in remission, but a year or so later, it returned. having suffered for many years as a result of the chemo and radiation treatments of that era, she said no more, let nature take its course.

My mother and I were very close. What made her passing so painful, was I was kept in the dark about her condition most of the time. I was away at college for a year, then the Army for two years, and was not informed of the seriousness of the cancer.

The pain I have carried all these years, stems from the fact that I had a summer job away from home, as she was dying and not told about this. Out of the blue one Friday, and on a whim to come home for a few days, I drove eight hours back to SoCal. I arrived home and my mother was not there. I asked my dad what was going on. He said she was in the hospital but did not say she had so little time left.

So the next day, Saturday, I visited her...she was 51 year old, but looked like eighty something. I was stunned. I saw her the next day, and no one told me she had mere days to live. I told her I would come home next weekend to see her, and left the hospital around 7 pm to drive back to my job. She died six hours later.

I’m so sorry. I think she waited for you to visit her before letting go.

 

[veni vidi vici]

Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on... So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything... The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all... We do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors...but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal... Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. ~Hunter S. Thompson

 

[Ed Lada]

Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on... So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything... The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all... We do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors...but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal... Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. ~Hunter S. Thompson

Many people treat life like their favorite restaurant and often order the same dish time after time because they know it well and liek it.

I preferred to live my life like an all you can eat buffet. I tried as many dishes as I could, some were great, some I would never want to eat again, but it was all interesting and I learned a lot of different things.

Everybody has a different idea of how to live their life. That worked for me, others prefer consistency and predictability. That's fine too.

I believe the only goal in life is to find a life that truly suits you. The rest is just details.

And best of all, I have

 

[SloopJonB]

Life should be lived according to Colin Chapman's idea of a perfect race car - it totally disintegrates just as it crosses the finish line.

 

[Snaggletooth]

Life should be lived according to Colin Chapman's idea of a perfect race car - it totally disintegrates just as it crosses the finish line in teh leade.

fixte

 

[Point Break]

Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on... So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything... The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all... We do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors...but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal... Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. ~Hunter S. Thompson

I’m not sure what to think about this.

Life without goals seems a little too aimless for me. There is probably a difference between a goal to “be something/someway” and goals you set for yourself personally and professionally. I really didn’t strive to be something, I bumped along pretty serendipitously chasing things that seemed interesting. Isn’t that a goal to be any number of somethings?

Perhaps he is talking about some single minded laser focused goal to be a something specific but is that bad? I know guys who wanted to be firefighters since they were young and steered that path resolutely finally achieving it. They were/are ecstatic about their life choice and achievement.

I think this is a little too esoteric for me.

 

[SloopJonB]

Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life.

That somewhat describes how I lived my life - I worked to live, not lived to work. I had lots of opportunities for "advancement" that I turned down because they would intrude too much on my life - corporate politics, keep me away from my family too much, make me move to places with no sailing and the like.

It was not worth it just to get a bigger title and more money - once I was making enough for my purposes I didn't bother with the race anymore.

 

[MisterMoon]

It felt very odd to wish she would pass so it would be over and feeling guilty about that wish.

I had the same wish when my father died, and still feel the same guilt 9 years later. He was dying of respiratory failure. With no hope of recovery, we decided to take him off the ventilator and let him go. They kept him on oxygen after removing the ventilator. it seemed to me it was only prolonging his sufferin, so I asked the hospice nurse if it would be worse for him if we took him off it. She said, no, he was going to die with or without, sooner without. She said most families didn’t have the courage to ask. So we did was gone in less than an hour. A friend consoled me it was ok to wish for it to be over and to not prolong the inevitable. His final hours were pretty awful and at least his suffering ended. I know in my head it was the right thing to to, but there is still a feeling of guilt that I don’t think I’ll ever get over.

 

[Point Break]

I had the same wish when my father died, and still feel the same guilt 9 years later. He was dying of respiratory failure. With no hope of recovery, we decided to take him off the ventilator and let him go. They kept him on oxygen after removing the ventilator. it seemed to me it was only prolonging his sufferin, so I asked the hospice nurse if it would be worse for him if we took him off it. She said, no, he was going to die with or without, sooner without. She said most families didn’t have the courage to ask. So we did was gone in less than an hour. A friend consoled me it was ok to wish for it to be over and to not prolong the inevitable. His final hours were pretty awful and at least his suffering ended. I know in my head it was the right thing to to, but there is still a feeling of guilt that I don’t think I’ll ever get over.

Late at night…sometimes when I can’t sleep…..I think about those things. I understand it intellectually, completely shaking the the feeling in the silence of sleeplessness doesn’t go away. I simply accept it as part of the journey. Life isn’t always easy and decisions are sometimes the least awful of all those presented to us. We do the best we can.

 

[oldsurfer]

Life isn’t always easy and decisions are sometimes the least awful of all those presented to us. We do the best we can.

When she stopped breathing, I held her close while she got cold

 

[Point Break]

When she stopped breathing, I held her close while she got cold

I held her hand. I know what you are saying.

 

[boomer]

Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on... So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything... The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all... We do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors...but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal... Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a

It was an answer to Hamlet's question:
"To be or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles…"

(Shakespeare)

In Hunter's own words and as I recall a young man, not yet of age when he wrote it.

As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: A man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at a maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal), he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform his own abilities and desires).

In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important. And it seems almost ridiculous to say that a man MUST function in a pattern of his own choosing; for to let another man define your goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life -- the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.

Let's assume that you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let's assume that you can't see any real-purpose in any of the eight. THEN -- and here is the essence of all I've said -- you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

Naturally, it isn't as easy as it sounds. You've lived a relatively narrow life, a vertical rather than horizontal existence. So it isn't any too difficult to understand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who procrastinate in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.

So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living inside that way of life.

But you say, "I don't know where to look; I don't know what to look for." And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don't know -- is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.

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If I have some criticism - it's that it's advice from a 20-year-old , someone fortunate enough not to have been exposed to the vastness of life yet. One also has to understand by reading his work during this time, to put oneself in his frame of mind and put it to Hamlet's response.

That IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal.

That's not Hamlet's question. His dilemma is not contentedly in mediocrity or Be Something More", but choosing between stoically enduring the world's cruelty, or else something unthinkable something worse. The rest of his thoughts run like this:

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep.

An older person's demon is not mediocrity wrought by complacency. They recognize that reality's caprices are far greater than any wilfulness they might throw against them, and so the conflict is roll with the punches or else quit the game. Hamlet sees that the only truly powerful decision anyone can make is to stop making decisions altogether (and that's something existentialists like Camus would say too). The choice isn't between floating or swimming; it's more like floating with the water, or drowning yourself against it. Cnut's legend explains why:

With the greatest vigor he commanded that his chair should be set on the shore, when the tide began to rise. And then he spoke to the rising sea saying “You are part of my dominion, and the ground that I am seated upon is mine, nor has anyone disobeyed my orders with impunity. Therefore, I order you not to rise onto my land, nor to wet the clothes or body of your Lord”. But the sea carried on rising as usual without any reverence for his person, and soaked his feet and legs.

Reality is inconceivably greater than any man, even a king. Hunter S. Thompson had yet to realize his own impotence. Of course he had, he was twenty. It'd be miserable if he recognized it at that time.

So when he says,

Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes.

he misses the significance of being subject to experience: that it makes it impossible for you to defy who you've already become, and that change occurs not because of anything intrinsic to your Being, but by the uncontrollable good/bad fortune of having the experiences you ended up exposed to help or haunt your sense of self.

He was young and not yet worldly : he believed that he could foresee what future experiences awaited him in choosing this or that path. He didn't see either first off, how constricted his sense of possibility was by his own history, or secondly, how ignorant he was of what experiences that path truly entailed.

A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

But a man already is something, cannot help but be something. The problem isn't being a fireman or lawyer, but in not liking being a fireman or lawyer.

And so really what Hunter S. Thompson is expressing (and his friend is too) is not Hamlet's conflict of being or not being, but of being one thing rather than another thing.

So it'd have been more valuable for him not to suggest being governed by his "abilities" and "desires" (neither of which are really "his" anyway) but to dive into self-reflection and ask "Why do I value this way of being?" and "Why do I scorn that one?", and to see what changes he might wreak from within. If he wanted to be true to himself, he'd have been better served by engaging in precisely that attitude that he'd admonished: attempting to conform himself to his goals/reality/circumstance and seeing what man emerged from that, instead of naively daring it to conform to the man he wasn't.

Actually it's neat that water is the metaphor that keeps popping up, because there's a short Taoist story to sum up the difference:

An old man accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive.

"I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived."

 

[boomer]

I think the biggest 'catch 22' of modern life, when going back to when I was 18-20 - is that we live in a money driven society. If the person you want to be, and the goals that suit this, don't involve earning a steady income almost immediaty, it's going to be a tough pursuit. Especially if you are a provider for others. I found that out right away, leaving a good paying job to work for a pittance in the military, I had to find ways to make extra cash, without exhausting myself - especially if we were on a 12 on and 12 off schedule or worse, sometimes for weeks on end - whatever, however long it takes - that can happen in the military.

 

[veni vidi vici]

I think the biggest 'catch 22' of modern life, when going back to when I was 18-20 - is that we live in a money driven society. If the person you want to be, and the goals that suit this, don't involve earning a steady income almost immediaty, it's going to be a tough pursuit. Especially if you are a provider for others. I found that out right away, leaving a good paying job to work for a pittance in the military, I had to find ways to make extra cash, without exhausting myself - especially if we were on a 12 on and 12 off schedule or worse, sometimes for weeks on end - whatever, however long it takes - that can happen in the military.

As in every other walk of life!
It takes discipline if you want to sum it up in a single word

 

[boomer]

A whole lot of gotta wanna and holding to ones path, even if one takes an occasional side trip, then returning to the main path, will take one further, then having no direction at all.

 

[boomer]

Welcome back Snaggletooth!

 

[veni vidi vici]

A whole lot of gotta wanna and holding to ones path, even if one takes an occasional side trip, then returning to the main path, will take one further, then having no direction at all.

Many many examples to this day!
I had a coworker that escaped the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia with his wife after escaping from a prison camp and making their way to Thailand.
I don’t think either he or his wife ever made more than $15 dollars a hour yet they managed to save their money, buy a modest house, raise 2 sons both of whom have college educations and good jobs.
As you implored up thread you must save some of which you bring home.

 

[veni vidi vici]

.

 

[Charlie Foxtrot]

Many many examples to this day!
I had a coworker that escaped the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia with his wife after escaping from a prison camp and making their way to Thailand.
I don’t think either he or his wife ever made more than $15 dollars a hour yet they managed to save their money, buy a modest house, raise 2 sons both of whom have college educations and good jobs.
As you implored up thread you must save some of which you bring home.

Back in Cali, our neighborhood donut shop was owned by an Asian gentleman. Got to know him over the years of buying Friday donuts for the team. He had escaped from Pol Pot’s Killing Fields with only his family on his back. Up at 2:30am 7 days a week, making the best damn donuts, he built a thriving business. He sat for hours behind his counter, with tears in his eyes, the day he became a US Citizen. In his gnarled hands he clutched the small American flag given him at the ceremony.

Last time I saw that flag, it was mounted proudly above the coffee urn for all to see.

We have no idea how lucky we are. He did.