By Idit Shoham

 

 

 

 

"Instinctual life as a whole serves to bring about death" (Freud).

 

 

A man gets bored of his life. He cannot sleep. He does not function well. He does not have a job. He just wanders around the streets. He has images in his head, hinting that there is something beyond – the purpose of his whole existence, the TRUTH. But, a simple man does not ask many questions.

 

Happiness has eluded him for a long time, perhaps since he was a naive little child. So, this man finds a purpose in the red Ferrari he sees in a store. He works to get money to buy the car. The work is not enjoyable. A simple man is alienated from his work. He has no personal interest in the work that he does. His own creative potentiality is repressed. Nevertheless, his work allows him to buy the car of his dreams. Unfortunately, the only thing in his life that brings the promise of happiness causes his early death. Was it all worth it…dying so young? Perhaps it was. Had he stayed at home all day, he would never have been happy between the four walls of his room.

 

A simple man dies alone. He does not leave anything behind, nothing but a weak failing echo that will soon be gone. Kierkegaard said: "Each of us is simply here, thrown into this time and place – but why now? Why here?" To exist as a human being is inexplicable, and wholly absurd. There seems to be no meaning, no purpose – no one huge truth.

 

According to Heidegger, his death is his "most authentic, significant moment". It is his personal potentiality, which he alone must suffer. He also said: "…if I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself".

Alternatively, Jean Paul Sartre said: "Death is my total nonexistence. Death is as absurd as birth – it is no ultimate, authentic moment of my life, it is nothing but the wiping out of my existence as conscious being. Death is only another witness to the absurdity of human existence".

 

Being mortal, nothing is going to change the fact that we will all face death sooner or later. A simple man will probably not embrace death in his life in order to be free from the anxiety of it, as in Heidegger’s discourse. A simple man will also probably not sweep death under the carpet, because he is aware of death and anxious of it: Lots of simple people die every day while watching their favorite TV news channel.

 

So, a simple man should have made a change. But, he cannot...being just a simple man.

 

 

Video – Bored to Death

 

Download: video -- Part 1
Download: video -- Part 2

 

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