Why don't y'all just resurrect an old child-free vs having children thread? Every forum seems to have one.
I know I replied to this already but I for one sort of look forward to death. Obviously I may change my mind about that if a tornado were to rip through my house right now, but.. It would be freeing, at least, wouldn't it? I'd rather not have a body anymore. I don't particularly want my memories or wonky brain chemistry or my sad little atrophied remnants of past identities that stick to me and bubble up periodically to sabotage me in odd, stupid ways-- I feel no emotional attachment to any of it. I want to toss it into a garbage fire.
I do think that losing some of our self-centeredness and getting out of our little insular worlds (in which we're more likely to have either an overly-romanticized or overly grim view of death, and only think of it in terms of how it affects us personally) more often would aid us in understanding death-- on rare occasions, when I'm in certain states (no, not drug-induced) and my mortality suddenly hits me to the extent where I momentarily forget who I am or what I am and then the constantly-narrating observer-me (which everyone has, as it's basically the filter through which we see the world) just vanishes which immediately expands my awareness in a way that seems to somehow go beyond my body, obliterating whatever remains of my 'self' in the process and it always feels equally terrifying and liberating as there's no longer a tangible separation between "me" or here or there or the void itself and I imagine that's what death might feel like in the final moments.
As for animals, their deaths affect me just as much as human death would when it's a pet I'm closely bonded with. I'm still not over the deaths of the two dogs I had as a kid (Jack, a wolfdog/german retriever mix and a golden retriever/chow named Sugar) or my cats Henry and Charlie who I didn't see die but, they may very well be dead. Sugar died of old age when I was 12-- I had her since I was 6 years old. Jack got hit by a car on my 13th birthday, and Charlie disappeared (he was a very sweet neighborhood tomcat who followed me everywhere) and Henry--who I was extremely attached to and vice versa-- was abruptly given away by my mother without my knowledge 7 years ago. All of this is why I regularly stalk the adoption listings on Petfinder.com and stare at all the pictures longingly.
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