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Alua Arthur’s Followers (87)
Alua Arthur
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Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End
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published
2024
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13 editions
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“I am exasperated that people believe death is the great equalizer. Yes, we all die, but we die of different causes at different rates in different ways There is nothing equal about death, except that we all do it. Death and dying are culturally constructed processes that reflect social power dynamics--they are unequal. How we die is wrapped up largely in the intersections of our identities.”
― Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End
― Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End
“At every step in our path, some possibilities die behind us while others bloom before us, and in every transition, even the joyful ones, there is grief.”
― Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End
― Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End
“Maybe what I needed, finally, was to wake up to that voice inside of me, and acknowledge, finally and fully, what it was trying to tell me:
ONE DAY YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.
It is the simplest truth of them all, and yet it is the one we fight the hardest.
We push it away. We procrastinate. Death is something that happens to other people, or else to us in a future so distant it's the same thing as "never." We prioritize all the things that matter the least at the expense of those that matter most.
People wait entire lifetimes to see the Great Wall of China until they are too sick to travel, and save the bottle of Veuve Clicquot till they can't drink anymore.
We wait till tomorrow to make that important phone call, until Friday to wear the purple lipstick, or for the summer to start working on the clubhouse for the kids. Before we know it, we have an illness, then a diagnosis, then we are knocking at death's door.
Life is now. It's right here. This is it.
The past is just a series of memories coded in the hippocampus. Tomorrow, forever a day away, is a myth and an illusion of our brain's insistence on linear time. This moment is the only one that exists. In the very next moment, you could also be gone, a memory in someone else's hippocampus.”
― Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End
ONE DAY YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.
It is the simplest truth of them all, and yet it is the one we fight the hardest.
We push it away. We procrastinate. Death is something that happens to other people, or else to us in a future so distant it's the same thing as "never." We prioritize all the things that matter the least at the expense of those that matter most.
People wait entire lifetimes to see the Great Wall of China until they are too sick to travel, and save the bottle of Veuve Clicquot till they can't drink anymore.
We wait till tomorrow to make that important phone call, until Friday to wear the purple lipstick, or for the summer to start working on the clubhouse for the kids. Before we know it, we have an illness, then a diagnosis, then we are knocking at death's door.
Life is now. It's right here. This is it.
The past is just a series of memories coded in the hippocampus. Tomorrow, forever a day away, is a myth and an illusion of our brain's insistence on linear time. This moment is the only one that exists. In the very next moment, you could also be gone, a memory in someone else's hippocampus.”
― Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End
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