A Reflection on my Conceptualization of Death Death was often a topic I felt too uncomfortable to approach. The concept of mortality scared me, but oddly enough, this very fear also motivated me to challenge my boundaries and register for this class. Grappling with the texts and confronting my own one-dimensional conceptualization of death was a rewarding experience, and through journals that I kept through reading various texts, I could witness the development of my thought process. My interpretation and analysis of death has evolved from one of conclusiveness and optimism to that of ambiguity and content. The following is a reflection from the beginning of my journey: “Our lifetime is so brief. And to live it out in these circumstances, among these people, in this body? Nothing to get excited about.” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations) I found it interesting how this statement by Marcus Aurelius could be read as both terrifying and reassuring through different perspectives. At first, reading this excerpt overwhelmed me with a feeling of existential dread. The idea of existing as such a minuscule speck in the infinite realm of the universe scared me. If life itself is meaningless against the vastness of space-time, does anything we do matter? Facing one’s own mortality against the scope of the world can seem hopeless, but Aurelius’s tone struck a chord with me. Aurelius’s writing reads as calm, tranquil, accepting – all adjectives I did not associate with upon my first reading. However, after some reflection, I began to interpret Aurelius’s words in a different manner. If life is inherently meaningless against the vastness of space-time, can’t we just assign our own meaning to our own lives? Can’t we positively control how we view our own mortality? By grounding ourselves in the present like the stoics, perhaps, we can find hope in our own demise. Reading this reflection back, I feel that I had a naïve understanding of death and, specifically, Aurelius’s portrayal of a stoic death. At the beginning of the year, I had much of a “black-or-white” mentality where I absolutely needed a concluding statement to wrap up my interpretations. However, this method of analyzing such existential text was misguided. I often missed the bigger picture through the simplification of the readings, misrepresenting the intentions of the author. Specifically, when focusing on this reflection, my concluding sentence implied a sense of finality and hope to Aurelius’s writings about death. While there is nothing wrong with finding finality and hope in death, I gave a misleading and rushed account of Aurelius’s beliefs for the sake of finding an optimistic resolution. I initially believed Aurelius was portraying death and the finitude of life as evil. In actuality, Aurelius wrote about death as an ambiguous, natural process of life, one that is “something like a birth, a natural mystery, elements that split and recombine (Aurelius, 5).” Rather than being evil, death is “a natural thing. And nothing natural is evil (Aurelius, 4).” Thus, because death is a combination of natural and mysterious, its contrast to life helps us take advantage of our time and promote good. As Aurelius writes, “While you’re alive and able – be good. (Aurelius, 4).” The following is a post from later on in my reflections: “And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.” (Luke 16:26, KJV) I found this parable’s parallels to the Sartrean perspective on death interesting. In the parable, despite the rich man’s pleas to be saved from his punishment in the afterlife, Abraham emphasizes that once passed into the afterlife, one cannot repent or cross over the “great gulf” between Abraham’s bosom and Hades. The decisions one makes during one’s life determines judgment in the afterlife, and there’s a sense of finality to death despite there being a religious afterlife. Similarly, the Sartrean perspective on mortality highlights this sense of finality in a secular manner; Sartre himself wrote that death haunted him as it was “the possibility of there no longer being any possibilities for [him].” Personally, I was raised Christian, but I am currently in a bit of a spiritual limbo. Thus, I enjoy reading these passages/parables from my childhood and finding the overlaps between secular philosophy. I especially remember reading this parable as a child and finding great comfort in the idea that despite the situation one is born into, anyone can be rewarded in the afterlife for doing good. Like the motifs found in “Mother Earth,” death is the great equalizer since we all “go back to mother earth” or, in the case of this parable, we all end up in the same afterlife. However, re-reading this passage with a much different perspective as an adult brings more questions to light. What is the afterlife judgment if one intends to do good but creates bad? If the conclusion of a situation is a “good” result but the means to get there was “bad,” is one still punished? Is faith a non-negotiable factor in who gets punished? There is no way to know the “right” answer to any of these questions, but it’s fascinating to visualize this relationship between faith, reward, and the self. This reflection displays much of how I matured in the textual and conceptual analysis of this depiction of the afterlife. Reading about secular philosophy invited me to explore less optimistic and more “material” descriptions of death. This confrontation towards the gritty idea of indefiniteness after death through Sartre, Heidegger, and Beauvoir seemingly opposed my Christian upbringing, but through this parable, I surprisingly found many parallels between religious and secular belief. While Sartre promotes being-against-death, his fear of the “possibility of there no longer being any possibilities” parallels the preaching of Jesus (Teodorescu, 97). As this parable details “a great chasm” fixed between those punished and rewarded in the afterlife, a sense of finality akin to Sartre’s end of all possibilities is reached (Luke 16:26). Compared to the first reflection, I felt that I engaged more deeply with the source material, connecting motifs from this passage to a school of thought that might normally be viewed as contradictory to religion. Additionally, the lack of a final resolution in this post demonstrated my effort to accept the ambiguity of death. Ultimately, I still have much to improve and learn, but as exemplified by this post, I feel that I have improved in opening my mindset and finding connections to previous material. My understanding and interpretation of death has become more nuanced throughout my reading journey. By stopping the over-generalization of texts and accepting that there is no one correct approach towards death, I have found contentment in this gray area. Works Cited AURELIUS, MARCUS. Meditations. STERLING PUB CO INC, 2022. King James Version . 1911. Teodorescu, Adriana. ResearchGate, 2019, pp. 97–97, Facing Death: A Sartrean Perspective on the Contemporary Tendency to Over-Humanize Death.