https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28633605
I was struck by how fantastic everything looked, this was what a dream workshop would look like.
However the man behind it was gone and it was inevitable that this amazing workshop would slowly wither away just like everything else.
This was the "best" case scenario - living on in a memory for maybe a few more decades
I feel a big hole in my childhood now. May he rest in peace.
Kari Byron also died recently setting a land speed record in a jet car.
Let's discuss someone that lives a long time above the median lifespan. Maybe 95. Almost all of their former classmates, colleagues, siblings, cousins, partners, and peers are either dead or too sick to travel to the hospital/funeral. They've likely had mobility, energy, or cognitive problems that reduced their involvement in the community over the last 15 years. Many people 20 or 30 years younger that they might have mentored, raised, or inspired will have passed. To someone 40 years younger or more they would have always been 'old' in their mind, and generational gaps would conspire to make them further apart socially.
Someone that dies younger than median will often have more hospital visitors and more funeral attendees by the simple fact that more of the people they knew in life are alive and healthy enough to travel.
He lived in the same town his whole adult life. Everyone his generation was dead but he had made so many friends, business relationships neighbors and acquaintances over the years it didn't matter. Also helps that he had 9 kids which equates to a lot of grand children and great grand children.
First, all my most important pictures have people I care about it in them.
Second, I watched family-in-law going through old family photographs and discarding objectively wonderful but unmarked photos of people that no one could identify anymore, and heavily filtering photos of family members that were identifiable but no one still alive had known.
I had not put two and two together before that point, but even your own great grandchildren will not treasure photos of you and your exploits. And why would they? They are strangers. It is no different with myself and my own great grandparents, even if I wish otherwise.
It reframed the purpose of photography for me. In a sense its whole function is really as a memory aid, to help me recall good times, connect over shared memories, and strengthen my personal bond with friends and family.
I do really hope that “alone” is not the fate for everyone, although I haven’t figured out how that’s supposed to happen in an age where friends and family uproot and spread around the globe like leaves in the breeze.
A long time ago (during the film era) I remember taking all kinds of photos on vacation. I would routinely take photos of mountains and rivers and other beautiful landmarks. But in the end, when I would get the batch of photos back from the lab, having people in the image made it more interesting, and people I knew much more so.
I wonder if time will invert things and the interest will revert back to the landmarks.
I will probably make digital copies of the pictures and get rid of most of them. But when I die, I have no allusion that anyone else will care. Honestly, my wife will probably be the last person who cares about my pictures.
Actually made me think random business memoirs could be a rich vein of untapped entertainment/edification.
What's frustrating to me in my own position in life is this feeling that so much is out of my control. So in a sense it's like seeing others stealing my life from me or some such thing. Through ignorance, or bias, or malice, or whatever the case might be, it's not knowing how to do what you'd like, even when it seems relatively modest.
So this perspective, of "preparing to die has a lot to do with having had a good life," has started to take on this other perspective. Frankly it makes me a bit angry, to read advice coming from people of relatively good social status, who have the privilege to write a book that garners attention because of their own vocation, to do an interview about their ability to do carpentry in their spare time, to have the resources for it. But what about the individuals shut out of those opportunities, whatever it is they wanted?
I'm not really sure what my underlying point is but the article and your story seem like complements to me, and touch on frustrations I have with society in general, and what I see as lost opportunities for having a life one sees as good. I have mixed feelings about articles like this because they never go further than the personal despair of those experiencing the despair, and not into the deeper issues. If dying peacefully means having a satisfying life, why are we so focused on the pain at the end, and not what gets them there, and what we can do differently?
It seems to me that the pain that accompanies euthanasia, suicide, and natural death are all the same pain at some level. And in all these cases the discussion is focused on that endpoint, not how to prevent it over the long run.
It’s the pain of loss. You can’t prevent loss.
नैव किञ्चित्करोमीति युक्तो मन्येत तत्त्ववित् | पश्यञ्शृण्वन्स्पृशञ्जिघ्रन्नश्नन्गच्छन्स्वपञ्श्वसन् ||5.8|| प्रलपन्विसृजन्गृह्ण्न्नुन्मिषन्निमिषन्नपि | इन्द्रियाणीन्द्रियार्थेषु वर्तन्त इति धारयन् ||5.9||
Those steadfast in karm yog, always think, “I am not the doer,” even while engaged in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, moving, sleeping, breathing, speaking, excreting, grasping, and opening or closing the eyes. With the light of divine knowledge, they see that it is only the material senses that are moving amongst their objects.
Ancient Indians divided the life into 4 phases namely Brahmcharya(learning phase), Grihasth(family life), Sanyas(detachment), Vanprasth(leaving for Jungle).Last phase emphasised on living and dying alone in the Jungle away from family and fame. Modern Indians have lost these messages primarily because they have stopped reading.
You can refer to the following link. True philosophy begins at shloka number 2.11. However, I will recommend reading from the beginning to understand the context.
I used to work in health care and once there was a patient, and old man, barely alive, groaning and getting ready for hospice. I didn't see any indication, like family pictures, that anyone visited him. The nurse told me "He used to be chief of surgery and head of this hospital." I thought, so this is how it ends for all of us no matter how high and mighty, dying alone, hopefully having made peace with our God.