I am grateful to AC Grayling (on Desert island Discs) for the observation that human life usually lasts less than 1000 months, so you had better just crack on with it & make it as good as you can
I am also grateful to Grayling for the following (from his The Choice of Hercules): "One must distinguish between the state of death & the act of dying, recognise that dying is a living process, something that happens while one is alive, when all ones rights are or should be fully engaged"
The goodness, quality, or value of a life is not measured by its length
If it were, what could you possibly say to someone who loses a child?
I, unintentionally, upset my mother very much when I was 16, probably just over the peak of my intense attachment to religion. A boy at our school – a real golden boy – died in a freakish bicycle accident. My mother said how terrible to die so young. I said – with genuine curiosity – why could it be bad if you really believed he was in Heaven with God? Oh well, she said, it is terrible for his parents
Well yes. But if you push that, is it not the same as selfishly demanding that others not die in order to spare us pain?
There is a terrible double tragedy in AC Grayling’s life, which made his voice crack even as he gave a (necessarily) brief outline on Desert Island Discs. And still he directs his considerable gifts to thinking about, writing & sharing his thoughts about, The Good Life
Mauriac comments on the early deaths of composers – Mozart, Schubert, Weber, Schumann & Mendelssohn – saying "Perhaps that is the price they had to pay for the privilege they now enjoy. They live on in our midst, more invulnerable than the angels, & we, from below, look up at them with humble adoration …"
I do not think that holds up either – the idea that one must somehow pay a price for such a privilege
If there is anything I can believe it is that some people live much more intensely than others, burn out earlier. However they do that, it is not for us, or any doctor, & certainly not Government ministers to say They died before their time
