Only by a frank discussion of the very details of dying can we best deal with those aspects that frighten us the most. It is by knowing the truth... that we rid ourselves of that fear of the terra incognita of death.
Interpretation
Addressing the details of death openly reduces our fear of it.
Sherwin B. Nuland emphasizes that confronting the specific realities of death in a candid manner can alleviate the deep-seated fears associated with it. By exploring and understanding these often-avoided details, we gain insight and clarity, which enables us to approach the concept of death with less dread and more acceptance.
In practice
In a conversation about end-of-life care, this quote can remind participants of the importance of discussing fears.
Where nothing in a person's earlier years lends itself to an old age devoted to continuing intellectual and physical pursuits, a late-life interest in Tolstoy or even crossword puzzles is unlikely to appear, no matter the urging by well-intentioned social workers or people like me who write books about it.
Where the despair of loneliness and poverty haunts every hour, the optimism to embark on new projects cannot find a place to alight on the brain's cortex. Poverty itself is an enormous obstacle to an enlightened and enlightening - not to say healthy - old age.
Being someone who had had a very difficult childhood, a very difficult adolescence - it had to do with not quite poverty, but close. It had to do with being brought up in a family where no one spoke English, no one could read or write English. It had to do with death and disease and lots of other things. I was a little prone to depression.
I think when you think of death as being part of the life cycle and recognize that death is an inevitability for our species because the world has to be renewed with each death, then the hope becomes when it is renewed it will be renewed by people on whom I have had some influence for good.
Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost.
The greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it. This is a form of hope that we can all achieve, and it is the most abiding of all. Hope resides in the meaning of what our lives have been.
My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.
Providence is like a curious piece of tapestry made of a thousand shreds, which, single, appear useless, but put together, they represent a beautiful history to the eye.
Those spacious regions where our fancies roam,_x000D_ _x000D_ Pain'd by the past, expecting ills to come,_x000D_ _x000D_ In some dread moment, by the fates assign'd,_x000D_ _x000D_ Shall pass away, nor leave a rack behind;_x000D_ _x000D_ And Time's revolving wheels shall lose at last_x000D_ _x000D_ The speed that spins the future and the past:_x000D_ _x000D_ And, sovereign of an undisputed throne,_x000D_ _x000D_ Awful eternity shall reign alone.
The most dangerous kind of man is not the one who spent his youth shoving others around. That kind of man gets lazy, and is often too content with his life to be truly dangerous. The man who spent his youth being shoved around, however β¦ When that man gets a little power and authority, he often uses it to become a tyrant on par with the worst warlords in history.
Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment.
You can't judge an internal injury by the size of the hole.
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