Death and Idolisation

I am unsure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I finally have material to write a post here.

Leonard ``Spock'' Nimoy just passed away recently, while a certain old school strongman is hanging in the balance between life and death. A friend posted a note on my Facebook Wall (yes I'm still using that... for now) commenting about how as time went by it was starting to be a little weird to see the pillars of one's youth dying one by one.

I remember talking about the second death before, the idea that one truly dies when everyone forgets the essence of what one was.

So, in some sense, when one is physically dead, one doesn't truly die when one's essence is still remembered. Leonard Nimoy will be remembered as the man who brought us Spock of Star Trek, and he will also be remembered less so as the poet/musician/director he was, while his relatives will remember him as a part of family. He may no longer be among the living having died the first death, but he has not died the second death, and therefore he is still alive in that sense. So, I don't feel the need to feel sad.

Same for the certain old school strongman, should the time comes where he ends up on the other side of the balance.

I suppose I'm odd in the sense that I don't attach too much to the physical embodiment of any particular person. No, I'm not cold. What I mean is, unless I know the person well personally and have interacted with the person on an emotionally more intimate level, if they are a public figure of some sort, I will only know them for their work, and not them as who they are. So, even if they did pass on, I do not see them as a loss, not in the way that is most emotionally jarring. Sure, they're not going to have anything new from them (they're dead), but the body of work that captures their essence isn't gone, and therefore they still live. After all, that is what we know them for, and in some sense it is more real to live in their works than in what we believe we know about their lives.

Because of that, I don't feel too bad or feel that things are crumbling when important people from my childhood age and eventually pass away now, some twenty odd years later. Death is part of life---there can be no distinction of life if death didn't exist. It may sound cold, but I think this is the right type of attitude to face the world.

Idolise the work, idolise the values, but do not idolise the mortal. Mortals die, works and values are eternal.