If anybody were to use death as a symbolic representation of "bad," polarized as a negative factor of existence, I would scoff. Death can't be coined as good or bad anymore because, at least with my experience of human thought, there are far too many stipulations tied to the whole idea of death. Quite obviously, good or bad is relative. Take any one death, under any given scenario, and you will have infinite outlets of perception tied to it that render the effort of such analysis completely obsolete. We are trained to believe humans' instinctual gravitation toward survival as solid proof that death is bad. But what of the suicide victim who wishes to die? What of the miserable mother-in-law who fades away in her emphysemic bed while the ridiculed son-in-law sits close by? Will her suffering yield ample atonement? "The only good cat's a dead cat," they sometimes say. What if she has assets?
Our minds are also tossed around between sharp divides of expected mannerisms and reactions to death. Some people believe that mourning is a sacred process of getting over it. Some people settle for the "you should be happy because he's in a better place" approach. Regardless of how you act, it all reflects your personal opinions of that particular death.
But symbols aren't meant for encompassing personal opinions. Symbols are meant to generalize an idea that is applicable for all cases. Like in mathematics, which revolves around a slew of symbols, for something to be valid and true, it must be true for all cases. So essentially, do our thoughts and feelings, which we express in the most animated displays of gestures, symbols, and actions, all equate to some mathematical value that identifies how consistent each of us individual people are with defining our beliefs?
For instance, last night at midnight, one of my best friends (Zach) who now lives in Chicago and who I have been referring to in the last couple posts about Chicago, randomly called me up and said, "What are you doing tonight and only tonight? I'm in town because I have to attend a funeral tomorrow." Bam. Just like that, my sentiments of my last Friday-post were appeased. Zach's great uncle died so he had to attend a funeral in Michigan, which allowed him to show up in town. I was more than overjoyed about this. I stayed up with him and my friend Ethan until 4:30 in the morning when I had to be up by about 8:30. It was, to say the least, a really good thing.
So, essentially, what I'm saying is that I'm partially happy Zach's great uncle died. Yeah, I'm not happy that another soul who meant something important to people passed away, but the effect of it, which caused Zach's presence in Caledonia, was more than satisfying for me. But trying to analyze how my joy is caused more because of the "secondary" effects versus "direct" effects of the indident, in my opinion, is pointless. A death happened, and I feel a certain way about it. One way only. Yes, in that emotion that I am feeling can be a great blend of various thoughts, opinions, and emotions that makes it seem like I feel many ways at once. But truly, when I say "Zach's great uncle died," I feel ONE way about it. And in my personalized situation, the consistency of that feeling is much more happiness than dread.
So let's let the "death equation" be y = ax + b, where y is my emotional value, with positive numbers being "good" or happy, and negative numbers being "bad" or distraught. If we let a = my proximity to the deceased, x = my current emotional disposition, and b = how long I've known ther person...you get what I'm saying (hopefully).
Things are just too variant. I sure hope I didn't make myself sound like a complete idiot by writing this stuff.
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