Life&Death

"Death is a mirror which reflects the van gesticulations of the living. Death defines life;a death depicts a life immutable forms; we do not change except to disappear." 

                             - ("Day of the Dead", page 54, Octavio Paz) 

The day of the dead passage created interesting ideas about death and life. It argued that death was only as important as we let it be and that it was simply a fact of life we must accept. I thought of many other poets that had written about dealing with death. Surprisingly, I realized that two of my all time favorite poems are about death. These two poems are "Anna Bell Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe  and "Because Death Could Not Stop for Me" by Emily Dickinson. I love these poems for two separate reasons. I love the Emily Dickinson poem because of the extremely solemn and tranquil way she approaches death in her poem.

"He kindly stopped for me –  The Carriage held but just Ourselves –  And Immortality. We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure"

Jackson talks about death almost as an old friend that is bringing her to a casual lunch. 

I love the Poe poem because it does not describe death as a friend but rather as a conquerable enemy. Poe acknowledges that while death may have separated him and his beloved wife for a while, their love is still as strong as ever. 

I wondered what made these famous poets take such different approaches to death. 

I think it comes down to what each persons experience with death is. Dickinson is famously known for having had mental issues. Her issues may have made death appear like rest and relaxation. Poe's relationship with death was a close one. He constantly thought and wrote about it. It was familiar and he felt he knew it well enough that his love could conquer it. 

Paz, Dickinson, and Poe offer different words about death but I feel that their experiences all bring familiarity to death which is why none of them really fear it. Perhaps the reason people fear death so much is simply because so many people have such little experience with it. 

What makes us, us.

"He, too, when a child,and even later, had been superstitious, filled with an arsenal of beliefs which his mother had instilled."  

                   -Machado de Assis, The Fortune Teller

 What role do our parents have in making our personalities? 

                       Camillo was extremely superstitious because of the way his mother had taught him. As I read about this, I thought back to one of the basic debates in my human development class. Are people the way they are because of nature or nurture? If Camillo's mother had raised him not to believe in ghosts would he still have had the basic disposition to believe this?  This age old debate is called nature versus nature. Hundreds of psychologists have hundreds of different ideas about which one is correct.

 This debate can spread through various fields. I can especially apply this into my major, political science. In my major, we often examine what gives each person their political ideology.. is it the state they were born in? The type of schools they go to? The way their parents taught them? How their parents taught them? (All elements of nurture) Or is it their basic personality trends they were driven to? (nature) 

 The nature vs. nurture debate can be taken to levels as basic as food preferences. Do we like food because we were raised being given that food or do our taste buds have preference to that?

As I read through various material on this subject, I began to think of a broader context for this. Can we blame our bad choices on our nurture? I thought of people like Stalin and Hitler. As I thought of this, I formed an opinion leaning towards our nature forming who we truly are. As members of the LDS church, this is even more applicable with how we believe agency is what guides who we turn out to be.