Newsflash: You are going to die.

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No, seriously, you are going to die.

Segregating the old and the sick enables a fantasy, as baseless as the fantasy of capitalism’s endless expansion, of youth and health as eternal, in which old age can seem to be an inexplicably bad lifestyle choice, like eating junk food or buying a minivan, that you can avoid if you’re well-educated or hip enough. So that when through absolutely no fault of your own your eyesight begins to blur and you can no longer eat whatever you want without consequence and the hangovers start lasting for days, you feel somehow ripped off, lied to. Aging feels grotesquely unfair. As if there ought to be someone to sue.

Comments

  1. Ellen Finnigan says

    Man, Debbie Downers blogging at a time near the end of the world! I am going back to the Daily Mail now to find out who’s looking good in a bikini these days, and what Suri’s up to.

  2. There is nothing like the third week in January for existentialist angst. Tomorrow is (on average) the coldest day of the year for the northern hemisphere, ya know.

    Anyway, if you want a whole great theological text on this, read Arthur McGill’s Death and Life: An American Theology. Similar points, placed in the framework that we have made Death the Lord of our Lives. The constant denial of it is evidence of the fearful power it has over us. And that, he says, is kinda the opposite of Christianity, whoopsie.

    It’s not going to get a nihil obstat (he wasn’t Catholic and there is one statement where he kind of dives over the orthodox cliff) but the rest of the book is excellent.

    Or you can just wait and read my book should it ever get published, since it has a chapter on death infl by McGill.

    • Matthew Lickona says

      “Should it ever get published.” Is there a tentative date?

      • Angelico Nguyen, Esq., OP says

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      • In the mind of God, yes.

        No, it got the nicest rejection ever by Brazos, who said it was indeed ecumenical but just too Catholic and they were afraid Catholics would not come to buy it with their name on it…but they loved it and wanted to publish it. Just can’t. So off to Catholic publishers, who are not publishing academic texts. Hoping mine is the exception.

  3. Quin Finnegan says

    This calls for Auden:

    Elegance, art, fascination,
    Fascinated by
    Drab mortality;
    Spare me the humiliation.

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