Coming Of Age

A friend has sent me a link to an article about Barbara Ehrenreich talking in her latest book (coming out in a few days, hence the interview) about Aging, and how at her advanced age (late 70s) she is comfortable with the idea of dying, and not to attempt to prolong life by a lot of medicines and restricting one’s diet, just to go for it and feel free to enjoy herself in the process; commenting in the interview ruefully on how a lot of her friends are “frantically scrambling for new things that might prolong their lives”.

My response to my friend:

“I think it's great that/when old people get over their fear of dying.  Or anybody.  Recently I was thinking, if I were ever asked to address say a class of high school students on the edge of graduating from that stage of their experience/education, what I would say, from my longish experience of 'it all'; and I came up with the idea of saying, simply: "You are born.  You grow up.  You die.  Discuss," and listen in, mostly, as they 'discuss' the issue of What It's All About.  And I would hope that the discussion would get around, at some point, to the likes of the article that I sent you, about some kids who have remembered, in exceptional detail, a past life - each of them, from/with their own individual cultural backgrounds this time around, and what that connotes about It All.

“And then there is the factor that we are, have been, artificially limited in our age span; whereby, once we understand how to lengthen the telomeres at the ends of our DNA strands - which we are in the process of doing as we speak - we can/will live far longer than we do now, on average.  That Zecharia Sitchin, whether in deep detail or not, was right in crediting to the Anunnaki the DNA limitations that 'they' put on the likes of the life spans of their creations [more accurately, our manufacturers, via genetic splicing] - us - in order to keep us in enslaved category to them, so that we wouldn't be their equals.  (And in number of DNA strands too, apparently.)  So that the whole actual picture is a bit complicated; but the bottom line is that This Isn't All There Is.  And so we don't have to settle for either our relatively short age span or the belief that This Is All There Is.  And thereby freeing up our thinking on the general subject.  And so, not wanting to shuffle off the mortal coil too soon.  Because of the Interesting Times that we are living in. 

             

“So, there is more to it all than just not being afraid of death.

“Stan”

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Discuss.