Death’s Dirty Little Secret...don’t tell.
Two Hundred Thousand people died today. Did you know that? An average of One Hundred Fifty Thousand die, each and every day, across the globe. Every day we boil away, swirling and whirling in the mist of this churning. Go ahead, Google it for yourself and then do the math; and discover that nearly two people (1.7333) die every second…of every minute…of every day.
Maybe because we don’t see it, it isn’t there. Like when I buy my steak from the store. It’s packaged in a bloodless, sterile container…far removed from the cow’s actual death. I don’t think about death when I buy it nor later when I cook it on the grill.
On the other hand, my wife watched a documentary on factory farming — where the death of the cows was documented in detail. It so impacted her, that she became a vegan. Maybe, acknowledging death changes you fundamentally, frees and enlightens you — or as Twain implied, you have a chance to live to the fullest.
I know. You’ve been told not to be morbid. Focus on the sunny side. But ignoring the inevitable and the commonplace seems stupid to me. Can you imagine hearing the roaring noise of the 300-foot waterfall that you and your rubber dory are rapidly approaching. You turn to your friend; do you hear that? She replies smiling, “hear what, I don’t hear anything — isn’t the water beautiful.”
Certainly, death is all around us, commonplace — we just can’t hear the roar, or rather, we choose not to hear the roar.
It has been this way for a long, long time. Take a look at this chart comprised of UN data showing annual deaths per 1K people — remember there are 7.8B people alive today.
Wow. Look at all the years that had a higher death rate than 2020. Even with a pandemic on the prowl? Yep, even with a pandemic on the prowl. So, I earned my MBA in 2019 but don’t need it to understand the implications of this data…and I don’t like it.
Have the activists and politicians tapped into our primal fear — the fear of death itself? Please tell me that they haven’t slummed so low as to politicize death. To throw Covid-19 weaponized stats at us with one hand while they bleed the treasury dry with the other? Tell me they aren’t doing this to assist their corporate donors in crushing the competition.
The whole rational presented for my (and I presume your) life’s greatest disruption: to keep us safe? We just read the stats: the death rate remains little changed in the last 20 years. So, and I can’t say it emphatically enough: Stop using our fear of death as a political weapon!
