What Truly is, “To Die For?”
I love this question. Certainly not homemade, straight from the oven banana-nut bread, although it is really, really good.
Braveheart died for “Freedom!” Socrates for truth, Romeo for love. Good reasons all, I suppose, when you read their stories. Certainly men of conviction, if not good sense.
What would I willingly die for? A difficult question, yes... if I am truly honest with myself.
Would I die to save a friend? How about a stranger? Easy to answer “yes” from my comfy couch. More difficult though when in the midst of a shooting and your choice is to “run, hide, or fight.”
Would I give my heart to save my child? Absolutely! But what directions might her life take without my presence, and guidance?
Would I die for my beliefs? What good would it do? They are mine, and mine alone, so would they not cease to exist along with me?
But is it not in deliberating such difficult philosophical questions that we find reason to:
Wake
Live
Love
Labor, and even
Die?
The harvesting of thoughts seeded by such questions prevents us from venturing through alone. Difficult questions spark diverse answers, which increase the paths for us to choose from.
I hope they keep asking the difficult questions so that we can continue considering them, even though, just like Big Momma’s deep dish peach cobbler, they are really not “to die for.”
I hate this!!
this is not a real question.
i thought of this, read other posts.
and i get only angrier every moment.
this is terrible.
you are blind if you don't see:
you want an answer.
you want some heroic statement,
you want some romantic scene.
will die for? will myself to die for?
i don’t know.
the life i have i give to my daughter,
but it is living for,
and not dying for,
that matter.
there are no evil wizards,
the wolves are not waiting.
if i had to, i would face them ,
if i could.
but the question that is much,
Much morr important,
is if in life, am i doing for her,
am i a good father?
do i let my wraknesses,
trespass?
does she feel love?
will she grow well,
healthy , happy,
intelligent and resourceful?
will i teach her the right things?
should i even teach her,
absurd romantic notions,
like princes, dashing with their lance,
to slay dragons?
does she really need,
that Freudian , self-destruction crap?
better teach her,
about telling good from bad,
lie from truth,
edible from inedible.
i make no plans, therefore for tigers,
and do not wish an arsenal,
of reeking,
oily hole-punching mechanisms.
we have a tool box,
we have play-dough,
we have legos,
we have a piano,
we have books,
and food and a blanket.
that is what i want to think about.
Semantics.
As a parent, the answer comes swiftly: My children. It’s the same reason a bee will sting, literally ripping itself asunder; to sacrifice itself for the hive. Or, if your prefer, the same reason a mother octopus starves herself to death while cleaning and caressing her fertlized eggs in a beautiful coral cave, leaving her carcass for her hatching brood to cannibalize.
Indeed, any creature of parental instinct knows it well; the survival of the next generation takes precedence. So, of course that’s the one thing I would willingly die for! No hesitation.
Only... technically, my children aren’t one thing. They’re four.
Respite
Death
too often
seems an inviting respite.
I watched my father die.
Sat on his bed
as cancer
that had spread to his brain
made his last words hateful.
I cared for my mother
helpless
her six year descent
into confusion
unaware
So
willingly
I’d spare
the time and expense of it all
senseless suffering
for what?
To be kept alive
once I was no longer
me.
Keeping it short and sweet. One thing i will risk it all for, would be my religious beliefs.
What One Thing Would You Willingly Die For?
Now greater love is this that a man gives up his life for another. It is this example I live my life and am will to die for; for living is the Messiah and to die is but gain. Shalom.
Short List
The only thing for which I'm willing to die is death...and nothing that comes before.
What one thing would I willingly die for?
Sweet dayless slumber or the warriors heart plundered.
Subtle slip into careless blunder or great ocean turmoil take me under.
Blissful succumber to young illness or bashed bloody by bloodlust wonder.
All manors of fate in which I could live in,
to die for you I would gladly pick any sweet brother.
I won the game.
I would die for more time on earth, alive. Try to think your way out of this one...
My Death for My Choice
Death is an inevitability; all those with life will eventually succumb to it. It awaits with certainty at the end of the road, and not a single mortal soul could escape its welcoming arms in the end. Yet during the middle of the path, perhaps even from the beginning, when one is stumbling through both pain and joy of life, that death remains a choice, the one choice that will always remain.
In life I would constantly ask myself, what is the one thing that makes me, me?
Is it my race?
No, for I am one amongst millions.
Perhaps my age?
No, for I am considered part of a generation?
Would it be my likes? My dislikes? My dreams for the future?
No, not even then. For as long as there are billions of people out there in the world, there must be hundreds of thousands that share the same likes, the dislikes, even the dreams for the future.
No, the one thing that I can claim solely to myself is my life, and the choices I made within. It is impossible, even for twins, to experience the same life, to make the same choices, and for all that people can claim similarities, true understanding is beyond our reach. One can sympathize, perhaps even empathize, but never truly understand.
It is that one single truth that guides me in life. Perhaps my life, my mark on this Earth would be more insignificant than the path of an ant or the slow crawl of a snail, yet it will always be mine, and mine only.
So if there ever comes a time where I am presented choices, choices made by and for others, neither of which I would ever in life choose willingly? Then I shall fight back with all my being, and in the end, should that not prove to be enough, then with my own hands shall I end my life.
For it is not life itself that makes it worth living, but the freedom to make choices within it. There is no such thing as having no options, and death shall take me, free me, before I find myself choosing the depraved choice of another.