LIFE AND DEATH

At the beginning of philosophy, the philosopher Socrates said “Philosophy is the fear of death!” Why did he have such a statement? Because “fear of death” is an integral part of human life as well as everything. Humans have to be alive in order to be discussed and worth discussing because death is the end of everything and not even worth deliberating. Death essentially mentioned in philosophy is possibly an inseparable pair of ontology and nihility. Death is also a natural time predictor of one’s life; therefore, whether people contemplate it or not, time is ticking away. However; there are two perspectives of death, believers believe in the afterlife like Socrates believe in the land of gods where he rejoices in drinking his poison. His cup of poison was so enviable that the philosopher Nietzsche even exclaimed “The cup of poison was not given to Socrates as a punishment but rather Socrates consigned himself to the poison.” That cup of poison, like the crucifixion of Jesus, had achieved immortality.

Socrates once said that people are somnolent and then they fall asleep so that when they wake up, they have enough energy to live and work productively. Similarly, death, in time series, also creates a positive value just like Socrates died in the name of justice or Jesus Christ died for an ultimate cause of establishing justice and saving a dull-witted and deceitful world. Therefore, people conduct a benevolent life in order to earn a sound and concern-free night’s sleep.

Western people are always living happily as there are a lot of old people travelling far and wide with backpacks on their shoulders or ninety-year-old women taking up bungee jumping; meanwhile, Vietnamese people, despite just moving to the city and not even working yet, have thought about retirement. If there are no travelling trends from Western cultures, we Asian people will never consider touring around the world and will always hold the belief “out of house, out of job”.

When people think of death from all perspectives, they often think of the life after death such as whether they will turn into a soul or how they will be worshipped after their death. But there is a rational certainty: the value of one’s death, whether worthy or contemptible, depends on how they lived. There is a saying “People are treated with respect for what they have devoted to others.” As a Vietnamese saying goes “People only treasure those who are useful to society not those who are worthless.” Those who are emotionless and useless are never treated with respect.

A few years ago when I gathered in the front yard of Nguoi Ha Noi publisher at 19 Hang Buom with other poets and writers, the poet Chu Van Long expressed his long-held opinion “In Russia or many other countries, there are a lot of poets who suicide but in Vietnam, there is no one.” and he even cited several names as examples.

Why so? Because poets prefer writing short poems which can easily attract readers’ interest and therefore, can quickly cover them with glory. However, glory is always short-lived and after this, people will have to suffer from all the boring routines of daily life; therefore, these poets will develop dissatisfaction with themselves and their life so they decide to kill themselves.

Who can commit suicide? The most desperate ones! So who are the most hopeless ones? The most glorious ones! The more glorious people get, the easier they can fall into despair. Those who have big dreams are more likely to fall into disillusionment, like the Twin Towers of New York, because of their bulk, collapsing with a loud bang, unlike small tents only making little noise when they fall down. Napoleon - the most glorious man in the world had conquered all of Europe so he just wanted to commit suicide when he was exiled on St. Helen's Island. Only when one of his courtiers told him that “One should live to fulfill his destiny!” did he abandon that decision and live peacefully.

There are two types of people who resort to suicide: those who fall from the peak of glory and those who have a well-formed conscience, like the Russian writer Dostoievski once said. The latter are those who have the courage to make decisions about their own life. Meanwhile, those who have a slave mentality will never dare make their own life decisions but just depend on other people.

A few years ago, during a New Year party, when people were still not expecting that a poet would take this gathering as an occasion to publicize his poems, this poet was still stuck with dreariness and had nothing but his death to brag about. When I listened to his poems, I knew that everything was screwed because he had such a poor soul that he had to create a new topic for his poems, which meant his ideas and topics for poems had burnt out so he had to “make a loan from time bank” and make use of his death to attract others’ attention.

Western experts once said: The future of the youth is ahead while the future of the old is behind. There is a Vietnamese saying “A bowl of soup for the old, a new shirt for the young.” A new shirt here is symbolic of the future while a bowl of soup represents temporariness, old people can have soup for that day but they might not the next day. Therefore, people who just take death for granted without fulfilling their destiny are those who are never prepared for significant decisions in the future, just holding on to their authority and being concerned about making ends meet.

But we should take into consideration the fact that Vietnamese people are often ambivalent, cunning, and disloyal and act like they are superior to others by talking about benevolence and kindness. For example, those who revel in authority, money and sexual relationships are always citing the lesson of “getting over temptations” from the Buddha but in fact, they never give up on such pleasures and sometimes even indulge themselves in these desires. A few decades ago, there was an illustrious writer who always said that “everything is meaningless” but as time passed, people noticed that everything is important and meaningful to him even when there was no hope or logic, he still fighted for power. There was another poet who was nearing retirement, feared that his seniors would not retire and step down to concede his position to him so he always insinuated that “I’m not sure whether I have achieved anything significant in my career but I’m sure that I will retire on time” but in fact, his retirement age had passed and he was still holding on to his position. Alas, words are always easier than actions. Only people with conscience can be treated with respect because they always stick to their words. He reminded me of a saying by Confucius “People of authority in the countryside are often immoral” 

What is artistic literature? It is not simple like farming, if you are an artist and you do not have any success and achievements then you are a failure. And this failure is truly bitter. However, in order to avoid failure, the first thing people should do is to try. The second thing is to “climb the career ladder” and earn a high level position at the workplace to make up for their lack of ability; this also grants them with more benefits than others. Therefore, calculating every path and faking every smile, every handshake and every tear to exchange a path to eternity for a short-lived position at the workplace is rather unwise and injudicious because if you are wise enough you will never blow your own trumpet.

Here are some of my thoughts on life and death according to universal principle!

Hanoi 22/04/2020

 (Translated by Đặng Linh Chi)

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