{"id":506,"date":"2017-10-26T05:10:26","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T05:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/?p=506"},"modified":"2017-10-26T05:11:50","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T05:11:50","slug":"506","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/2017\/10\/26\/506\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflecting on Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

During my senior year of highschool, I worked in a retirement home. Despite the pleasant environment my coworkers and the residents created in the building, there was an underlying truth no one could forget: retirement homes are where people go to die. It sounds harsh, but we were reminded of it daily. There was always someone who had just died, had been taken away by ambulance, or was sick. Death was apart of everyday life because the residents were living in it.\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There were two different attitudes residents took on while living in the home. Most of them were happy with the time they had left and loved telling stories about their lives. They were so comfortable with death that they could enjoy the rest of their lives. This idea is reflected to a degree of what Roy Scranton said in \u201cLearning to Die in the Anthropocene\u201d: \u201c… instead of fearing my end, I practiced owning it.\u201d But every once in a while, there was a \u00a0resident or two who were incredibly bitter. They were angry that they were at the close of their lives. This was probably because they were unhappy with the life they had lived, or perhaps their children did not come to visit enough. Regardless of the reason, there are people who cannot the state they are currently in.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A retirement home can be seen as a metaphor for for the Anthropocene. As Scranton wrote, \u201c…we can learn to see each day as the death of what came before, freeing ourselves to deal with whatever problems the present offers without attachment or fear.\u201d We are living in death, but we cannot become cynical. We cannot go back to the age of the Holocene; we must look forward. It is our job to accept the actions we\u2019ve committed as a species. Once we have achieved acceptance, we can impart wisdom and set an example for the next generation. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During my senior year of highschool, I worked in a retirement home. Despite the pleasant environment my coworkers and the residents created in the building, there was an underlying truth no one could forget: retirement homes are where people go to die. It sounds harsh, but we were reminded of it daily. There was always someone who had just died,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal-entries","category-week-4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions\/516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}