It’s natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don’t see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we’re human we’re something above nature.
Interpretation
Death is a natural part of life, and our obsession with it comes from a disconnection with nature.
Morrie Schwartz's quote reflects on humanity's relationship with death and nature. He emphasizes that death is an essential aspect of existence, yet society often reacts to it with fear and resistance. This reaction stems from our belief in human superiority over nature, leading to a misunderstanding of our place within the natural world. By recognizing our interconnectedness with nature, we may find peace in the inevitability of death.
In practice
In a eulogy, to express the idea that death is a natural part of life.
People are only mean when they're threatened… and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.
The best way to deal with that is to live in a fully conscious, compassionate, loving way. Don't wait until you're on your deathbed to recognize that this is the only way to live.
Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them.
Do the kind of things that come from the heart, When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overhelmed with what comes back
When you look at it that way, you can see how absurd it is that we individualize ourselves with our fences and hoarded possessions.
Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward.
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment that we can savor - and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible.
It is good to know what a man is, and also what the world takes him for. But you do not understand him until you have learnt how he understands himself.
It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail. The religion and public liberty of a people are intimately connected; their interests are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For this reason, it is always observable, that those who are combin'd to destroy the people's liberties, practice every art to poison their morals.
From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.
The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.