Death, Celebrated.

The social constructs that emerge as systems of life may be facades attempting to guard human condition from acknowledging the arbitrary essence of death and pain, however I'd like to go off on a tangent from the discussion of the meaning of life and instead discuss a point that was brought up towards the end of the lesson.

In Western culture, the connotations of death include (but are not limited to) mourning, agony, and misery. We presumably base our "essence of life"on social constructs in order to find meaning that will explain this arbitrary and inevitable agony. But what if a culture does not view death in such a manner? There are other cultures not only across the seas but even within North America that choose to celebrate death instead of fear it. In Tibetan Buddhism, a practice common throughout all of Asia, the deceased are believed to have followed seven "cycles" that will eventually lead to rebirth. Unlike Christianity, there is no separate realm for the deceased in Tibetan Buddhism; the departed soul is led to new opportunities for happiness.

In Mexico, death is literally celebrated. Rather than mourn the death of someone when he or she dies, The Day of the Dead (El Día de los Muertos) is a Mexican holiday that honors the dead in a festive manner. In lieu of what would be expected to be a tragic commemoration, the Day of the Dead is a way of embracing death as a celebrated aspect of culture.

I cannot say that the nature of death is a pleasurable one. The passing of a friend or loved one (whether or not you believe your relationship with said person is caused by social constructs) can be very sorrowful. It has been argued that death does not occur for the actual deceased, but rather it happens to everyone around it. Nonetheless, we have the opportunity to either fear death and opt to escape its misery for a little while longer or we can trudge through the inescapable and unexplainable truth with the hope that our lives will replace our ignorance with adventure.