Although the senilicide attributed to Eskimos was never actually a generalized custom, but rather an exceptional emergency response to famine in the 18th century, the idea captures my imagination.
It's not that I have elders to dispose of, as my parents and grandparents have been all dead for years. Rather, I find calm in the idea of climbing on an ice floe with the intention of drifting away in arctic seas without food or covering until death comes.
It seems a humane way of ending what at a certain age -- mine -- begins to become a useless repetition of failures and missteps that will only worsen. Instead of steady impoverishment, physical decline, probable dementia and an eventual long descent onerous to relatives and society at large -- not to mention supremely boring to myself -- the idea of drifting off leaves me in a supreme peace.
From my years in Canada I have learned that freezing to death is, among ways to die, relatively pleasant. Cold overcomes consciousness, one drifts into a sleep from which one never awakes. All in a matter of hours.
Let's face it, death isn't going to be easy or painless. A few hours of drifting away in subzero temperatures might entail a bit of initial discomfort, but it seems bearable to me.
No more waiting through useless decades of "golden age" ... just a quiet drift into silence. Where's my ice floe?
3 comments:
Not yet. Wait three decades. The world need mature men.
G
Don't do it! We live for your blog!
The latest provocative post of Cecilio left me thinking... the 80s seem not to long ago that I had similar thoughts, at a much younger age. But then, it was a time when I did not fully realize what it really meant for others the errors and successes of this aging and rebellious skeptic. Facts proved me wrong. Neither drifting away slowly on an ice floe nor crossing the threshold of life in an instantaneous ultimate act of self destruction, would have brought forth the expected outcomes for family and society. Or avoided the feared ones that come with old age.
I am not sure where it is the source of my dissenting view of “oldness”, but I suspect it may come from a time and a place where old people were not thrown away to wither into oblivion at the expense of others, but were allowed to share to the end the laughter and sorrows of those being left behind.
I also thought of making a real effort and elaborate a rebuttal commentary to the premise that “at a certain age [one] begins to become a useless repetition of failures and missteps that will only worsen. Instead of steady impoverishment, physical decline, probable dementia and an eventual long descent onerous to relatives and society at large -- not to mention supremely boring to myself -- the idea of drifting off leaves me in a supreme peace”; if only because I found my peace in the smiles around me; in the successes built upon the lessons of my failures; and in finding everyday one more thing to be admired, examined, and shared.
Surely I miss the caresses of a passionate companion, but not as urgently since I found those little hands exploring an unknown and changing world. For sure I prefer to end as a guide in that exploration than as an insignificant speckle in a frozen sea.
Instead of rebuking my good friend, I will share with you another interesting point of view, which in part says:
"As co-author of a new report entitled Eternal Youths, I interviewed a number of baby boomers, who showed a peculiar reluctance to engage with the realities of being older. To those that we interviewed, the idea of being old suggested uselessness and decrepitude as well as the guilt of being a burden. Some were keen to voice their frustration at hysterical media and political coverage of the so-called 'demographic time-bomb'. Others feared that they might end up marginalised and thrown on the scrapheap in state-enforced retirement.
"But there was also another, more troubling reason why our baby boomers feared old age. Many were simply terrified by the irreversible physiological changes that accompany old age.
Many younger baby boomers are refusing to pass on the baton of youth culture to their children, believing that since they invented youth culture it remains rightfully theirs. In the course of the past decade, youth culture and popular culture have expanded their boundaries - and now increasingly encompass people in their forties. In return, the content of much popular culture - the slew of nostalgia programming and nostalgia advertising, for example - is beginning to reflect the interests of the middle-aged." From “Growing old ungracefully--Why the baby boomer generation is clinging to its youth.” by James Harkin
The full article can be found at: http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA5EB.htm.
Teo
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