But it's also about the quality of your life, for if you won't deal with your mortality, you cannot have more than a partial life, a shadow of a life. We tell ourselves we want to spend time on the important things of life, but there never is any time. Then there are clothes to sort out, choose, iron, and fold up again. As a second warning, I cannot be completely objective about this book as I have my personal fears of and problems with death and life. My interest is theoretical in that I seldom reflect on death with all my faculties, especially my emotions, but just with my intellect.
Intellect is cool and distancing.
Despite knowing better, I tend to automatically think of death, as most of us do, as something that happens to others, not to me personally. I also know, but seldom even think about, that tuning out reality my death, my life, in this case in any fashion, is costly. Well, I know about my automatic tendencies to avoid anything unpleasant, and I try to work against it. I also pray each day that whatever is higher in our universe will guide me to learn what is import ant, even if I'm avoiding it. It seemed to me that I probably had some obstruction of the bowels that would require surgery.