“Of course not, I lived and I’m grateful for it.”
As shown in the figure below, from 2020 to 2024, the number of deaths in the UK due to the epidemic has been very unstable, especially in mid-2020, when there was a significant surge, reaching 22,351 people.
The pandemic has made many of us feel the pain of being separated from our loved ones, and at the same time, most people are more afraid of death. However, do we really need to be afraid of death?
Daniel, a psychiatrist in London, said: “I believe there is no end, there is no beginning, it just carries on. After the epidemic, many people who came to me for consultation had family members who lost their lives during the epidemic. There was a middle-aged father who lost his parents, his son and his wife. He was the only one left in the family. He once wanted to end his own life. To be honest, the best way I can enlighten him is to live for himself.” Some people are not afraid of death, but of being separated from their children and family forever. Daniel added: “Death is just like a television, when it breaks, that is it. There is no after life, we only here once. Instead of focusing on death we need to focus on life.”
Rose is a student at the University of Greenwich, she said: “I don’t think I’m afraid of death. I see death is like an inevitability, it’s important to live your life to the fullest and everything you wanna do, but it’s good to fight against it.” When we fight against death for the sake of life, it will give us more vitality of life, live our life and do more exciting things. “But in fact, in my opinion, there is no very clear boundary between living for myself and living for others. I am a mosaic of people I have loved. The way I make ramen was taught to me by a friend in high school. Every summer I listen to a playlist a boy made for me, I used to take the train for eight hours, because I just wanted to see him when I was young; I started eating sushi because a girl I had no relationship with forced me to eat it; I ate Thai food because my best friend’s parents ordered it for me when I didn’t know what to eat; Maybe the biggest difference for me is that when everyone around me leaves me, I can continue to live with their love.” Rose added. It’s like this, some of the movies we like are because the people we love fell in love with them first. Our lives, preferences, and styles of doing things are influenced by the people we love, all emotions shape human beings. People are the sum of social relationships. The part of me that was changed by you replaces you and will always be with me. However, humans are not a patchwork of something, we just fall in love with bits and pieces of ourselves in different people.
Andrew is a high school teacher. He said: “No, not at all, and that when I die and it would be the other people’s times. I have been around people have died of both of my parents. When they passed away, I held their hands, it’s an inevitable fact of life that we die, to try and fight it, avoid it or ignore it. It’s foolish. I’d rather embrace it and enjoy the moment.” We have no way to avoid death, but what we can do is to do what we want to do in the limited time of life, see how the flowers bloom, how the water flows, how the sun rises, when the sunset sets, and want to understand some truths, meet the one we love.”
So the answer is actually not that anxiety-provoking, we should live for ourselves; when we die, it means the beginning of the next generation; I don’t want to be separated from my family, but I can live with their love. “Death is not losing life, it is walking out of time.”