What Does This Mean To You?

[bluemuse]

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"The horror of death is the horror of dying with unlived lives in our body."

- Norman Brown (RIP 10/2 at age 89) in Life Against Death

Don't die with a "what if" on your lips, an "I wish" in your heart......and no should haves, could haves or would haves left unexplored.

 

[Siren]

Re: Re: What Does This Mean To You?

 

[A Desert Rose]

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"The horror of death is the horror of dying with unlived lives in our body."

- Norman Brown (RIP 10/2 at age 89) in Life Against Death

Missed opportunities, regrets at not doing all the living one could do, ignoring or not fulfilling the gifts within one, not fully knowing who one is, not sharing the love and fullness that one is with another human being....... and on and on......

 

[bluemuse]

Re: Re: Re: What Does This Mean To You?

I totally love that.....may I use it in my sig line?

I would love it if you did.

 

[takingchances42]

To me, it means more than just living life to the fullest. It means that there are so many different rewarding ways to have lived life -- but no way to do more than taste the alternative lives we could have led. I could have lived life a hundred different ways, or a thousand different ways, but can in fact live it only one way, however varied my life is. We have to choose, and choices necessarily involve loss, even if they are the best choices.

 

[RosevilleCAguy]

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"The horror of death is the horror of dying with unlived lives in our body."

- Norman Brown (RIP 10/2 at age 89) in Life Against Death

It means that my decision to take every action possible to wear out my current body before I am done with it is the correct one.

 

[Siren]

Bluesy Muse

 

[Laurel]

"The horror of death is the horror of dying with unlived lives in our body."

- Norman Brown (RIP 10/2 at age 89) in Life Against Death

What it means to me:

Life is untapped potential. Every time we make a choice - get married rather than staying single; having kids instead of staying childless; eating at Wendy's rather than Carls Jr. - potential experiences are lost. We "give up" one life, and accept another - because you can't go down both roads simultaneously.

You can't live a wild party life AND have a lifelong monogamous relationship.

You can't devote yourself totally to a consuming career AND live a life of leisure and relaxation.

You can't go off to Hollywood and put all your efforts into becoming a famous actor AND stay at home and raise your children.

Life is a series of forks in the road (insert Muppet Movie imagery here), and at each fork (some big, some little), we must make a choice. We can't go down both paths.

There is no possible way to even get close to tapping into our true potential, to live all the lives that are within us, because life requires choice.

When we die, all those potential lives - us as Parents/Not Parents, as Lovers, as professionals, as people - die with us, untapped, unfulfilled, unlived.

That's what I think of when I read that quote. And that, to me, is the true shame of mortality.

 

[kotori]

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

********************
Reprinted from Mountain Interval by Robert Frost. New York: Henry Holt, 1921

 

[Laurel]

Exactly.

 

[kiwiwolf]

dude it means procreate

Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex... shame on you Perkster. It means go to church regularly, be nice to small animals and children, and barring that... fuck your brains out.

 

[millieteases]

And what strange beast is this
Slouching toward Bethlehem

 

[kiwiwolf]

Live your life as if every day is going to be your last. Take advantage of every opportunity to do new things and meet new people. Let the people close to you know exactly what they mean to you.

Thats what it means to me. Die knowing that you got every scrap of living you could out of the life you were given and pass the things you have learned on to those you leave behind.

 

[Marxist]

Did you know that most men have enough sperm to re-populate the planet IF every one of them found a fertile egg to inseminate?


Just a thought...

 

[kotori]

Did you know that most men have enough sperm to re-populate the planet IF every one of them found a fertile egg to inseminate?


Just a thought...

I think this is the great difference between men and women. Men produce millions of spermatozoa every day; they have the opportunity to procreate anytime, anyplace with anyone. Women produce apporximately twelve eggs per year. They have to be more selective!