South Koreans fake their funerals for life lessons
reuters.com
reuters.com
(SPOILER on bottom of post.)
> Ben X is a 2007 Belgian-Dutch drama film based on the novel Nothing Was All He Said (Dutch: Niets Was Alles Wat Hij Zei) by Nic Balthazar, who also directed the film.[4] The film is about a boy with Asperger syndrome (played by Greg Timmermans) who retreats into the fantasy world of the MMORPG ArchLord to escape bullying. The film's title is a reference to the leet version of the Dutch phrase "(ik) ben niks", meaning "(I) am nothing".
> The novel was inspired by the true story of a boy with autism who committed suicide because of bullying
There is also a Swedish remake (2013):
> Erik Leijonborg adapted the film into a Swedish-language remake, IRL.
[SPOILER]The reason it reminds me of that movie, is because Ben's death is faked to teach his bullies a (life) lesson.[/SPOILER]
Back when I watched it (it hit a spot), I did not play either MMORPGs nor did I know I had autism. Now I know I have autism, and I played MMORPGs.
The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.
Seneca
4.33 what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself.
4.48 Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man - yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.
- Epictetus
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory
It's not even a super deep insight or anything but it's still surprising how little attention it gets.
This is much more in line with the passage quoted above. Enjoy what you have while you have it. "This alone".
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/app.reading.stoic.stoicreadi...
I think Epictetos' Enchiridion is a good start.
I've lost many years of my life to physical disability, and pretty well all of my life due to mental problems which mess up my ability to deal with people[0], and without relationships you are nothing.
Reading this feels like someone telling others to "eat, drink and be merry", when those others are have no food or water - but the merry advice-giver has plenty, so what's the problem.
I'd never take away from someone else what I never had and likely never will, but frankly I wish more fortunate people would stop dishing out their insensitive, thoughtless advice.
[0] blah blah poor me with my sob story. Shit happens.
Then there are those who are eager for it to end, but have to wait for biology or fate to catch up.
There should be a clean Quit button.
I don't disbelieve you, but I suggest you try reading it again with an open mind. I think you are unconsciously imposing a stereotype onto those lines.
A nugget of wisdom amongst all the shallow stoical comments in this thread.
Just living in the moment isn't enough.
(This is excellent advice from someone who has never managed to finish any personal project.)
The long short is "faking their deaths" doesn't mean what we normally think it means. Its more of a therapy tactic for depressed/suicidal people where they get to go through with it. They write goodbye notes, have a funeral, even get put in a coffin for a few hours.
I don't know if it works but it seems promising.
Just about everyone my age and older still remember when a vessel was lost back in the eighties, initial reports were all hands lost - until suddenly, a week and a half later, the fisherman we'd all mourned for the past days came home, puzzled as to the sensation his appearance made - he and a couple others had been picked up off a liferaft, and Canadian authorities had misspelled his name when notifying their Norwegian counterparts there were survivors after all - so his family had not been notified.
Allegedly, his father's first words upon seeing him was 'F[---] me, did I just die, or is it you who've not died after all?'
Magne is one of the few people I know who've had the pleasure of reading his own obituary.
The game consisted of players taking turns lying very still and dead in some kind of coffin or just on the floor. Then everyone else takes turns going up to your dead body and saying last words about what a good friend you were or maybe you were an ass and the world is better off without you or absolutely whatever you wanted to say, sometimes funny and sometimes true. Then maybe you throw some “flower” or something and the next kid takes a turn.
When everybody has spoke their thoughts you’re covered with blankets or pillows or whatever we had and you experience just being dead and buried, until you get bored then you get up and it’s someone else’s turn to die.
I don’t know why we played such a morbid game as kids but there you go. Maybe it’s why I’m so cynical and nihilist as a grown up.
I wonder if there's an easy way to replicate the exercise yourself. Perhaps every month write a letter to be read out at your funeral? One idea I had years ago but never did was to make a short video for my funeral every year where I shared my thoughts, fears and hopes and where I was in life. The idea was I could look back in future and see how far I'd come, but that it would also be useful exercise at the time.
Nietzsche
--Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Excerpt from “Traktat vom Steppenwolf”[0] by Herman Hesse.
Paraphrasing: Like thousands of his kind, he [der Selbstmörder “he who commuts suicide”] doesn’t just use the idea that the door to his death is open at any time as a youthful and melancholic phantasy, but as consolation and a crutch.
(I really can’t translate)
[0] https://sanelatadic.com/media/DIR_15301/96989bdc407a2ecbffff...
Thanks for the reminder -- it is a timely moment to revisit those lessons.
One thing I'll add that I ran across is a short discussion between David Lynch and Harry Dean Stanton discussing life, and "how they want to be remembered"
Part of the human condition is underlying curiosity about death.