We're All Going to Die

Leah Kaminsky, "We're All Going to Die"
English | 2016 | ISBN: 1460749995 | EPUB | pages: 293 | 0.6 mb
Ever since I can remember I have harboured a profound fear of death. Even as a child, something as small as a dying moth crawling around in circles, leaving powdery traces of itself on the bathroom floo, could set off a flood of tears. Skull motifs on T-shirts, tattoos and jewellery have always made me squirm. I am scared of becoming ill, of dying, ever anxious about my own safety as well as the wellbeing of my family and friends. So how on earth did I choose a career in medicine, where I am constantly surrounded by people facing the threat of death? Until recent generations, death was very much a part of the fabric of life. Death avoidance, or the reluctance to engage in any thought or discussion around the subject, is a relatively new development in Western society. Nowadays, with the advent of mass immunisation, pharmaceuticals and other medical advances, we have almost forgotten that 'in the good old days' disease was most often a death sentence. nLess than a century ago, 10 per cent of infants didn't make it to their first birthday. Taking a stroll through an old section of a local cemetery is a sobering reminder of this, with many tiny graves lining the pathways. Religion once played a central role in providing a strong frame of reference for people to deal with death anxiety. The increasing secularisation of society sees many freefalling into a black hole of terror in the face of death, left trying to find another way to deal with this reality.