Endings and Beginnings :: Personal Narrative Essays

Endings and Beginnings   Death, while in mevery respects an end, actu altogethery serves as more of a ascendent for all but the most pessimistic of religions or philosophies. Even Socrates, at one time near the end of his vitality, at least, felt this soma of hopefulness. According to Plato, on his cobblers lastbed subsequently having drunk the hemlock, Socrates mumbled these last words to Crito I owe a cock to Asclepius do not forget it. In his time it was customary to offer a cock to Asclepius, the God of Healing, upon regain from a sickness, so at a time of impending death Socrates was actually thinking of healing in one way or another and start out anew. When he confronts the idea of his own death earlier, however, in Platos Apology, he says If I were to claim to be wiser than my neighbor in any respect, it would be this that not prevailing any real knowledge of what comes after death, I am also conscious that I do not possess it. On his deathbed, then, Socrates s eems to be offering the cock just in case, a common reason for religion for many dying people.   All religions have death rituals or hopeful ideas of where they will end up after their death Hindus seek to escape repeated reincarnation by practicing yoga, by adhering to Vedic scriptures, and by devotion to a personal guru Buddhists seek a state of living Nirvana by following the path of righteousness--if they be not perfectly righteous then they repeat another animation that is either good or bad depending upon their actions (karma) in their previous life Christians believe that if they take Jesus Christ as their savior they whitethorn gain access to heaven after their life on earth. Joseph Campbell believed that all of the worlds religions are tied together by the similarity of their myths. Stories of creation, holy trinities, resurrections, deaths, and arena repeat over and over again in slightly opposite forms. He believed, then, that all the worlds religions are the sam e, but theyre cloaked in distinct masks that betray the prejudices of the culture. One thing all religions have in common, however, is this When we die, we all go somewhere else in one form or another.   The beginning of a thing is its birth. The end of that thing is its death. Within the broad fabric of our lives--the coordinate system that begins at age zero and completes some manakin of cycle when our bodies stop breathing--we experience an infinite number of