There is only one resolution to take into a new year — the resolve to live on and continue anew
— WARNING ! this blog references themes relating to death —
As a new year approaches, so must the old one come to an end. This blog will briefly touch upon that transformation from old to new, and contextualising what it leads to.
Before I start, I can happily confirm myself to be in good spirit and good health. However, the topic of death is one which I address in this blog both unhindered from pretending it is not a thing, and without apology. What is death to the living? It seems to be paradoxically both a human obsession and a wilful denial. Whether in everyday living or at the most abstract philosophical mode of thought, we are paradoxically bound to it. Firstly, in daily life this New Years Eve. On the one hand we seem obsessed by death. As a general public we consume death, ever hungry for another feed. And the news feed cannot ever gives us our fill. On the other hand, there is opportunity everywhere to ignore actual death and welcome in a New Year of life to be experienced. Some will do both, others will do most anything to drown out all notion of these opportunities coming to an end.
Today, for example, the menu is heartily bleak. One may feast upon headline reports of death in war-torn interfaces of power and belief in Gaza and Ukraine. In the U.K. our animal rescue centres will face tough choices over abandoned extra-large bull-dogs — a breed deemed too inclined toward instinct to kill — because the end of 2023 marks a deadline day for them. This menu of headlines sees foreign death and animal death trumping enquiry into excess Covid related death or more reports of poverty-related death, at least for a day or two. On this menu of the macabre, our just desserts will be obituaries, remembrance, and tribute, to further point to life that was but is no more.
On the other hand, there is easy evidence of abandonment and denial. Drinking to excess, consumption of mindless trash on TV, escaping into a book or video game, or turning to social games to refocus communication more deliberately. Anything that quietens whatever thought of what not living means, a thought forever waiting to be heard once more.
Second, the philosophical abstraction of death. We can each only experience life because it is finite. Some argue philosophical thought is ultimately motivated by that very moment of inevitable end. To understand life — or at least give it context — is inevitably an invitation to address its beginning and it’s end. However, it is almost absurdly ironic to realise just how much time is needed to know life so much better by thinking upon it, rather than living it. Philosophical reasoning by degrees of understanding and deepening that abstraction slowly over years of learning versus practical living and just being. Thinking upon what life is, and consequently thereby living it less.
In my middle-age I am a reader of philosophical positioning of life more keenly than I am an experiencer of life itself. Only in the last few years have I read philosophy. It is perhaps only in 2023 that I feel comfortable in claiming to understand such abstract notions more confidently. Life has dealt me those cards and required me to sit more. It has turned me into an observer, more than a doer. As such I have both headlines and the depths of abstraction to witness both the obsession and denial of life’s finitude whilst also experiencing much the same paradoxical reality. At all levels of abstraction we seem parodies of never really understanding what meaning is. The contradiction we cannot escape. Both reminding ourselves of such finitude and at the same time seeking to pretend it is something others have to endure.
Having to put down the family pet at Christmas time has made death very real again for me. A small change in the grand scheme of all things, as both news feed and philosophical perspective both confirm. I am now of an age where death is a reminder of life. An age where notions of change are reminded of from the morning mirror to the next retirement to bed — i.e., in life both lived and yet to come. Change is happening all around, and from within. Learning to live with both — and managing some, whilst accepting others — is a process or journey of discovery and experiences always yet to come.
As 2023 expires, I am reminded that so too are new experiences of finitude now begun. Death begins anew, and I intend to live long into its inevitability with sense enough to be in good cheer. To contribute positively to life anew the best way I know how. That is perhaps as close as I get to a New Years resolution. One I will work towards understanding better — or at least explaining ever differently — as circumstances dictate and experiences allow me to.
Happy New Year, to you!
