![]() Plato’s description of the event not only brings tears to our eyes but also fills our heart with profound admiration for this brave, wise man. He might live but his philosophy would die. If he compromised his values in order to save his life, his philosophy would lack credibility. The wisest man in Greece knew his death was essential for the survival of his philosophy. “Let us face death as we have faced life-courageously,” he said. He was quick to realize that the time had now come to die for what he taught. “When you lay me down in my grave, say that you are burying my body only, and not my soul,” he told his disciples. Socrates also strongly believed and taught that death was not the end of everything. At the trial the judges had wished to let Socrates go, but the angry crowd had voted for his death-this was indeed a singular confirmation of Socrates’s conviction that the state be administered by its wisest men and not guided by the mob. But he gave them the brushoff without even a moment’s hesitation. Had Socrates accepted the offer, he would have been less great than he was. The great Greek philosopher Socrates (470-399 BCE) did it-and in what a dignified manner! His friends had come to the prison and offered him an easy escape, they had bribed all the officials who stood between him and liberty. Sometimes we can exercise our choice even in the external circumstances leading to our death. We do therefore have some choice in the matter. While we cannot choose the external manner of our death, we can definitely choose how we are going to face this great event. Our mental preparation and attitude are the key factors that decide how we’ll face our death. What is within our control is how we encounter death whenever it chooses to come. But this depends on circumstances beyond our control anyway, and knowing or not knowing about it cannot alter what is to take place. We do not know in advance the exact time of our death or under what garb our death is to come. We can be absolutely certain about nothing except our eventual death. Everything in life is continuously changing only the fact of death has remained unchanged. One big difference however is that, while some anticipated events may never take place, or if they do, not in the way we thought they would, death always takes place and every time in the same way, namely, by the stopping of the breath. And the answer is that, in this respect, the event of death is indeed similar to other events. So in what way is death less uncertain than other events in life? This is a valid question. Just as we cannot be too sure about the how and when of anything in life, we are also not sure about the how and when of death. We can point out, for instance, that if life has its uncertainties, so has death. The logic behind this thinking can be questioned, of course. Who is more intelligent and practical-one who plans to pluck the stars from the sky or one who plans to pick apples from a tree in the backyard? Moreover, plans about life depend on many variables over which we have no control, but a plan about death is entirely a personal affair involving only the individual, and hence far easier to carry out successfully. We are eager to plan our life which is only a crazy bundle of uncertainties, but we do not even feel the necessity to plan our death, although it is the only event we can be absolutely certain about. ![]() The greatest mystery concerns our paradoxical behavior. ![]() It is not surprising that most of our plans fail, what is amazing is that a few do manage to succeed. Some of our plans misfire miserably, some go awry midway, some need to be drastically modified, some require last-minute alterations and, if we are lucky, a few of our plans are accomplished perfectly. ![]() Not every plan works out the way we want it to. We spend hours planning how to do this and that, or deciding what unfinished job is to be completed over the weekend, or wondering where we should go during vacations, or figuring on meeting someone for something, and so on. We generally try to keep away from the thought of death (or, more accurately, we try to prevent it from sticking around too long in the mind) by busying ourselves with life and its concerns. It shoots up occasionally when someone close to us dies, or when we are in a profoundly despondent mood, or when we begin to question the meaning of life and human existence. It may not be always apparent on the surface, but deep down in the unplumbed depths of our mind this anxiety is ever-present and is very strong. That is one big source of anxiety in our lives. What we do not know is when we will die and how our end is to come.
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