The Absurdity in Death

As I grow older, I develop more personality and gain more knowledge I have realized that the thought or the idea of death has crossed my mind countless time; I think it has crossed many other people’s as well. What I am speaking of here is not suicidal tendencies. It is whether or not death should be feared. Despite the many things people say to get themselves feel better about the situation of dying, in the end, it always comes down to whether I have accomplished the many things I wished to have accomplished during my lifetime. The fear of dying before achieving all you desire in this lifetime scares most people which is what I believe to be the prime cause of fearing death. I understand where most people are coming from, but if you would just take a look around you’ll understand the one thing we know about death -- the one thing we can never really know. It is that death will come for everyone and there’s no way of predicting when, where and how.

We know very little about death. This fact makes our perspective fairly important on how we view death. Three philosophical approach to death and life could categorize the different perspective: Existentialism, Absurdism and Nihilism. Existentialism is about the finding and creating meaning even though meaning is meaningless. Absurdism is about the paradox between people’s attempt and failure in finding meaning. Nihilism is about understanding that creating meaning is useless. Each of these philosophical beliefs are too complicated for me to go into however, I believe that absurdism best explains life in terms of death.

Absurdism emphasizes on that things simply happens to people, that nothing has any meaning. Anything could happen to anyone at any time. It is as if the death and life has the same meaning. Absurdism is the attempt to find a different meaning for life, a more meaningful one but fails because none of these meaning will make a difference in life. I understand if the idea is hard to grasp which is why I have the perfect example. The Stranger by Albert Camus is a short novel which depicts the life of an absurdist. The novel shows the realization and growth of the absurdist character. The novel is truly a piece of work because it has the essence of a true absurdist. The novel won the Nobel prize 1957 and Albert Camus died in an car accident 3 years later, making Albert Camus the perfect example. His death explains the human inability in finding meaning in life, ergo things happen, and nothing has any meaning. Being the shortest-lived Nobel Prize winner, the irony in that is almost strange and even freaky. So basically, even if you have achieved everything in life, death will still come and get you.

Despite all I have said, it is necessary to fear death to some extent for people to function normally in this world. It is impossible to progress if everyone has a indifference attitude toward death and therefore life. The idea of what I am trying to convey here is hard for many to understand because the absurd is a paradox and so is death. Death is absurd because the many perspective we have about death. To talk about the absurd with absurdity is quite difficult for me to explain thoroughly without writing a whole book about it. But what I really am trying to do here is to expose you all to absurdism through death and hopefully you will all make further connections to life and all other things in it.