Are You Afraid To Die?

Today I am sufficiently exhausted that I can understand and empathize with people who want to die.

What I have trouble understanding is why people fear dying. I don't.

Following a traumatic event in my life in 1997, I developed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). For people with the most severe cases of CFS, just getting out of bed to go to the bathroom or to eat at a table can be either exhausting or painful or both. Mine was not that severe.

By the time I had finished breakfast on most days, I was so exhausted that I had to have a nap for an hour. Two or three naps followed through the day. Only when I took myself too far, beyond the point of being simply tired, would I have pain in every muscle in my body. I tried to avoid that. That's dumb. But it didn't always work.

Sometimes, going beyond the critical point becomes necessary. As a result of a series of coincidences, in the first half of 2007 I had more jobs to do than my body could manage. I got excessively tired every day. Recovery was not an option (is not even today) because the jobs that couldn't be avoided had to be done or my ability to sustain myself as a person would have collapsed.

When people get too tired, especially when excessive fatigue continues for a prolonged period of time, they begin to think strange thoughts. No matter how much sleep or rest (relaxing horizontally or sitting) a person gets, if the exhaustion continues the person can develop symptoms like that of sleep deprivation. Irritability, moodiness, impatience, intolerance of others or themselves, making mistakes that wouldn't have happened under normal circumstances, distancing themselves from loved ones and more problems ease themselves seamlessly into their life.

Sometimes, thoughts can turn to death. That could mean suicide, murder or murder-suicide. If severe enough, such as in some cases of post partum depression, it could even involve a mother killing her own baby, "to protect" the child.

Thoughts, discussion or proposals having anything to do with death are taboo in western cultures. Consequently we don't address their causes. "Go to the doctor." "Take a drug to make you happy." Pharmaceutical responses to problems or stress and other problems related to mental health of the 1960s and 1970s, primarily taking tranquilizers, evolved into taking a variety of drugs today. Some want to make smoking marijuana legal simply because so many people use it illegally, possibly as high as 25 percent of adults.

While people discuss the taking of drugs with emotional vigor, taking one side or the other, debate never turns to the subject of death and rarely to ways to avoid the effects of stress in the first place. In a materialistic society with an industrial mindset, normal conversation involves apparently healthy people talking about any subject other than death or social change to avoid the causes of stress that destroy so many lives.

The most important fact that we avoid talking about with those who may be suffering the effects of stress or some cause that makes another person consider suicide or murder is that the critical time in their life will pass, that they will feel better about life later. Discussion of how to reduce stress is not a popular topic among those with the industrial mindset. People who talk about stuff like that tend to be "out there somewhere," extreme liberals, aged hippies, not those in the mainstream of business culture.

One topic that everyone agrees on is that death is bad. Death must be avoided at all costs, even if it requires a person to remain in pain for years or to suffer in an institutional environment with most elements we consider as freedom removed. We don't know why. We don't discuss it so we never find out.

We have been told that death is painful, for one thing. In fact, it seldom is. For most people, even those who die unexpectedly or as a result of violence, death comes peacefully and as a release from the burden of life. Compared to many of the painful experiences of life, death is blissful. What comes before death, including treatment in a hospital, may be painful, but death is not.

You have likely heard of those who have returned from the brink of death, from near-death experiences or who have "come back from being clinically dead" speak of feeling at peace, of seeing a bright white light, of being welcomed to the next life. Even those who claim to have had out of body experiences, of seeing their bodies from above an operating table where their fleshly existence lay in clinical death, say that death was not to be feared, was not painful.

I don't propose that we encourage people to end their lives when they feel that life is no longer worth the pain and trouble. I do propose that we change our attitudes toward death and the stressors of life so that we can all live more peaceful, safe and loving lives.

Love is part of the equation. Those under constant stress have trouble feeling love, expressing love and accepting love.

The same may be said of people in depression. The odd thing about depression is that we know how to avoid it most of the time. Health experts know how it develops, why it develops and how to avoid it. But, except for a relatively small number of experts who put themselves out to help others through rough times, most health experts stay away from the subjects of depression, thoughts of suicide and stress.

Nothing improves when we refuse to talk about a subject that impacts the lives of everyone, either directly, indirectly through loved ones or friends, or both.

We may not be certain about what's "on the other side" of death. That doesn't mean that we should avoid talking about what's on this side. It could save many lives.

It could save your life one day.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about what, when and how to teach children what they need to know to live healthy adult lives, free of excess stress and fear.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Will Your Life Be Worth Living Past Age 65?

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
- Leo Tolstoy

Much as I would like to agree with Mr. Tolstoy, this observation is not so universally true today as it was in the past.

Many members of the Baby Boomer generation that made individuality more of a hallmark than any generation before them had ever done now want to change themselves to address a situation that no previous generation has experienced. They will live long past the traditional age of retirement, 65 years.

When Herr Bismark chose 65 as the age of retirement for the public service of Germany back in the 19th century, the average person didn't live 50 years. That was true well into the 20th century. Making some sort of provision for the few people that lived 65 years and beyond seemed a small price to pay.

Today the average person in the western world will live 80 years or more. In fact, within a few years there will be one million Americans 100 years old or greater.

That means that millions of Baby Boomers are looking at a minimum of 15 years of reasonably healthy life beyond their 65th brithday. Some will live 35 or 40 years past it. That requires some considerable planning.

The trouble is, humanity has no pattern to follow. Many will continue to work past age 65 because they need the income, while others will do so because they like what they have been doing and want to continue.

With more years to explore the individuality they sought so fervently in the 1960s, many open their own businesses. Being their own boss was always a goal for many of them. It's the great dream and countless numbers of them get an opportunity to fulfill that dream.

Volunteering takes up a great deal of time with today's retirees. Social programs for the elderly as well as mentoring programs and many other group activities that could not exist for seniors in the past due to insufficient funds can now be launched because retired people have time to invest time into them while not feeling the need to derive an income from them.

Many people approaching 65 still harbour the dream of their parents and grandparents, to become permanently on vacation from age 65 on. Sadly, most of them are unaware of studies that show that the average person who enjoys that "everlasting vacation" plan lives only six years past the date they begin. From age 65 on, atrophy sets in quickly.

Many retired people return to school, getting diplomas and degrees at an unprecedented rate. It has also become a time when people examine what they have accomplished during their lifetimes, consider what they hope to do with their remaining years and where religion and their beliefs fit into the grand scheme. These big questions can be serious problems because they don't necessarily know where to turn to find the answers.

An equally unprecendented number of retired people with many years ahead of them will live in pain and with severe disabilities, even bedridden. For some these will be the genetics of their families kicking in. For others--a great many others--the consequences of their abusing their bodies in their earlier years will play hard on them. Many diseases and physical afflictions take 20, 30 0r 40 years before they take hold as serious health problems.

Everyone among us has many spots within us that are technically known as pre-cancerous. In the past very few of these became malignant cancers because most people died before these pre-cancerous spots could mature. With more people living nine decades, more people will have time for the potential malignancies to mature.

In addition, diabetes will affect more and more people. Setting aside the rapid increase of diabetes cases among people who are younger at onset than in the past, everyone will get diabetes if they live long enough. It is estimated that even the healthiest among us will have diabetes if they live 140 years.

That's no joke. Many of today's children will live to be 125 to 140 years of age according to recent estimates among medical scientists who study such things.

That requires planning at a level that is unusual both for individuals and for national governments. We who are not into that retirement situation yet would be well advised to give thought to a long term plan for the years that our ancestors never got a chance to experience.

We need something worth living for.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the known problems of the future plain so that we can plan for them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com