Divorced

Throughout the lecture for both Theories and Mythology you used the word “divorced” to illustrate the differences between to ideas. I couldn’t help but realize the living and the dead are also two ideas divorced of one another. After all, practicing dying and the act of being dead is so divorced from life itself I have a hard time grasping the thought of trying such a thing. Why would I practice being dead while I am still alive, the thought seems morbid. But that makes me think of the student in class who asked why death has to be depressing. This got me thinking about western education and how society equates loss to death. So if death isn’t depressing is it joyful? Maybe there is an in-between, the world is not black and white and death surely isn’t the exception. Could death be peaceful, even a state of contentment? In order to find an answer of my own I suppose I would have to practice the act of dying. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. For me, life is a constant state of progression. So must I digress in order to understand death? And in understanding death would I understand life? It seems cliché to say, but doesn’t clarity come best when the pressures of life are no longer present?  Does it have to take approaching death to understand life? The idea of death or reality of death leading to new life extracts the only kind of reasoning that comes from the soul. Distraction from reality and truth ultimately leads to legitimacy of life. Right? The fact that there are more question marks than periods reassures me that I have absolutely no idea what I am taking about—which is exactly how one should feel when examining Plato’s Phaedo.

Divorced. Being that I am a clueless college student unsure of my own beliefs puts me right between ignorance and knowledgeable. One could say I am divorced from life and death in the same way I am divorced from ignorance and knowledge.