Life and Death
I have the opportunity to again be the proud dad of a baby son. He will likely be my last child I have in my lifetime. The experience of having him brings me back to the experiences I had with my first son. I have been comparing and contrasting them against who I think I was then versus who I think I am now. It's an interesting adventure. I spent a month off of work with this baby taking care of him. It was a wonderful and challenging time. I look forward to all the firsts again. To hopefully build a bond as I have with my other son and now my step daughters. To be his fan and a spectator in the awesome journey he gets to now undertake with his life all ahead of him.
The loss of my dad last year and birth of my son this year have me thinking about life and death quite a bit. I can't even seem to escape the subject in my dreams. Last night, for instance, I was gifting my dad some custom made alcohol and preparing to take a shot with him when I woke up. Sad part is it was 3am and I haven't gotten back to sleep so today at work will be an adventure in tiredness. Good part is that I still get to see my dad sometimes, even if it is just my dreams.
I am an agnostic atheist, I tend to quiet about that to most people in my life because I'm this way for myself alone and not any antagonistic reason. I just don't see an evidence of anything religions claim to exists. No god(s), no after life, etc. I bring this up because a challenge of this view has been it makes coping with the death of loved ones pretty hard.
I recently spent some time reading and watching videos on the subject of death and came upon a talk from Sam Harris. It was a rather tender talk compared to many others I've seen by him and helped me see him as not just a Neuroscientist but also as human and I really liked that. He talked a lot about perspective and about just trying to be in the present. He even used mindful meditation techniques in his talk.
And that helped me some. I still feel the sting of the loss. I still get angry at myself for letting myself get so down, especially with this wonderful new child in my life. But, at least, I can now be practical about it; I observe these feelings and thoughts don't have to crush me under their weight. I can let them go. And if / when I need to feel them again then that is okay too. After all it's a cost and testament of our bonds with those we have lost. And I would rather grieve that never have had that relationship with my Dad. I feel like I am better for having known about him, learned from him and spent time with him.
The loss of my dad last year and birth of my son this year have me thinking about life and death quite a bit. I can't even seem to escape the subject in my dreams. Last night, for instance, I was gifting my dad some custom made alcohol and preparing to take a shot with him when I woke up. Sad part is it was 3am and I haven't gotten back to sleep so today at work will be an adventure in tiredness. Good part is that I still get to see my dad sometimes, even if it is just my dreams.
I am an agnostic atheist, I tend to quiet about that to most people in my life because I'm this way for myself alone and not any antagonistic reason. I just don't see an evidence of anything religions claim to exists. No god(s), no after life, etc. I bring this up because a challenge of this view has been it makes coping with the death of loved ones pretty hard.
I recently spent some time reading and watching videos on the subject of death and came upon a talk from Sam Harris. It was a rather tender talk compared to many others I've seen by him and helped me see him as not just a Neuroscientist but also as human and I really liked that. He talked a lot about perspective and about just trying to be in the present. He even used mindful meditation techniques in his talk.
And that helped me some. I still feel the sting of the loss. I still get angry at myself for letting myself get so down, especially with this wonderful new child in my life. But, at least, I can now be practical about it; I observe these feelings and thoughts don't have to crush me under their weight. I can let them go. And if / when I need to feel them again then that is okay too. After all it's a cost and testament of our bonds with those we have lost. And I would rather grieve that never have had that relationship with my Dad. I feel like I am better for having known about him, learned from him and spent time with him.
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