Don’t men fear cancer just as much?

[quote=spdrun]Don’t men fear cancer just as much?[/quote]

Save the tatas not the testes

I was struck hard the other night by my mortality. Was terrifying. Kind of like this…

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
– The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused – nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear – no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=scaredyclassic]It’s difficult to live under the shadow of death. I’ve had this fear since 1979.

Probably the only thing we can do while we are waiting for the extinction of everything we are, have known and have loved, is at least to not waste the fish heads.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/03/07/286881659/why-we-should-quit-tossing-fish-heads-and-eat-em-up-instead-yum
[/quote]

When my friend went fishing and gave me fish I would cook the dish parts including the head into a stew for my dog. Yum. It stinks so put it in a slow cooker on the patio. Very convenient processed dog food gives your pets cancer.[/quote]

A bit more time in health buys nothing but a slight denial and delay for the emptiness that is always there

“Mortal” of the story? Ha ha.

I’m not sure how she mistook an absence of mass (air bubble) for a solid mass (tumor). Sounds like she needed better glasses!

[quote=flyer]Interesting excerpt from an article:

“From the beginning of time, people have asked themselves the existential question, “If I am doomed to die, what is the point of my life?” It is a terrifying question and different people have attempted to answer it in different ways.

According to the author Ernest Becker, in his book The Denial of Death, most people put the notion of death out of their awareness and go about living their lives without thinking about their mortality.

However, there are times when the fact of death breaks through to their conscious minds. When that happens they become temporarily terrified until the crisis passes and they achieve a new balance. What causes mortality to break through to consciouness? The death of friends, relatives and loved ones confronts even the greatest deniers of the fact that life is finite.”

Personally, I don’t see any of this as a negative, and, although we can try to preserve ourselves as long as possible in various ways, mortal death is simply a condition of mortal life, and, in the final analysis, there’s nothing any of us can do about it.

What we can do is choose to live the lives we want to live while we’re here.[/quote]

OR in the immortal words of Garth, “party on, wayne.”

Agree. Everyone deals with mortality differently.