Pushing Daisies & Creating a Bouquet

A Chapter by Parmenides

A very short essay about death.

Let’s talk about things that make people uncomfortable. Two things that almost pop up in mind immediately, Death and Public Speaking. It’s understandable why these two ideas come up to be the two most feared things. Death being almost second on the list to Public Speaking. As one of my professors once said, “Some people would rather die than speak in front of a large crowd.” Which is understandable, I have an irrational fear of heights myself. Mine is based off of, most likely, a psychological trauma occurring at a young age, resulting in my fear for heights.

However, my fear of height might be a stem from the large tree of death. Having a fear of falling off is essentially having the fear of falling and dying from a large height. Many other fears can stem off of the original idea of Death; Arachnophobia, Ophidiophobia, and Aerophobia all share a common theme. Arachnophobia is the fear of spiders, Ophidiophobia is the fear of snakes and Aerophobia is the fear of flying; again, all of them are related to death. Venomous spiders and snakes torture the dreams of millions of people, and people are scared to climb into an airplane because they have suspicions of flight malpractice. Truthfully, no one enjoys disintegrating thousands of feet in the atmosphere, or crashing and exploding on a mountain side. I wouldn’t.

But death, as many fear, should not cause dismay in our hearts�"for death is a beautiful concept that has been clouded with a dark after image.

Starting with Christianity and Islam, and all of its subdivisions that have branched off this mother tree. There are two places you can end up in, and many know them as Heaven (Jannah) and Hell. The glorious afterlife and the brooding underworld. And by a matter of following the laws carved clearly on a set of stone and written in blood in the bible, one can find it fairly easy to understand the vices that one must avoid. By avoiding every one of these “sins” people are able to join the right (and or left) hand sides of god, assuming god is ambidextrous. If you as so much fall into any of the vices listed in the rules, you will go straight into the pits of hell where you will suffer for the rest of your life. A very peaceful religion, if I do say so myself.

Essentially what I’m trying to say is that, you will be judged by the actions you have done throughout your life. And if the doorman in the metaphorical gates of heaven say you are a bad person, what is there to argue. Clearly you’ve done something worthy enough to suffer for all eternity. So should you be worried by death? If you had done bad nor good then I would suppose not. If you did something so righteous that it was worthy of a saint’s name then there should be no fear growing within your gut. However, if you had done something that was so vile that even a dog would fear you then yeah, you should be worried.

Same goes with both Buddhism and Hinduism. The efforts that you put in this life will set your future reincarnation. Buddhism goes even further and explains that once you reach a point of nirvana, you will live an eternity of bliss and happiness.

With all this praise over death, one should not be encouraged to die so quickly. For one Suicide is a sin or penalty in many religions and can cost you the opportunity of entering the Garden. Martyr is as well “justified” and can only be described as being killed in the sake for a religious cause. More importantly it is the action of “being” killed for your cause; not dying for your cause.

As much as I humored the violent scriptures of the Old Testament, all three religions stemming off of Abraham’s children are peaceful cultures. Every scripture after the new testament and beyond call for times of peace and somewhat equal views of each other. However, the long reputation of wars caused by religion has tarnished and bloodied the scriptures until they had been soaked red.

Imagine if a person had lived his whole life believing their patriarch had been a man of honor and understanding. Suddenly another figure had claimed that the patriarch had been dwelling with vices behind the shuttered doors of a tavern. The first person would react very harshly against this accusation, having his beliefs being tested here. He would reject the idea entirely and fight back, attacking the other man’s patriarch, never having met the man. Slowly the argument would become increasingly volatile, a single action could lead to an all out brawl.

If originally the man had kept an open mind and explained his patriarch, then none of this would have come to be. But ignorance had won and settled within their minds. Now only violence ensued. Each other’s families fighting long after the death of these two men. The original argument lost within the sands of time, fighting for a dead man’s dream.

Yet to come back to the point, death should be celebrated rather than be a time of sadness. Mourning will always be acceptable; as they are not in the realm in which we currently live in is a depressing thought to come to, but then again they are (as many religions believe) are in a brighter place full of bliss.