HW 30 - Illness & Dying - Culminating Experiential Project

The aspect of the dominant social practices surrounding illness and dying that I decided to explore was: What makes a fulfilled life? This doesn't directly relate to illness and dying, but it seemed to be a theme that came up throughout the unit.

In Staring at the Sun, the author brings up one of Nietzsche's ideas: "What if you were to live the identical life again and again throughout eternity - how would that change you? (Yalon 98)" and then reflects upon it: ".....the idea of living your identical life over and over again can be kind of jarring, a sort of petite existential shock therapy. It often serves as a sobering thought experiment, leading you to consider seriously how you are really living (Yalon 100)." The idea presented here is that upon asking themselves this, someone would probably decide there was something about their life that they had to change in order to be happier.

In Tuesdays With Morrie, there was a part where Mitch asks Morrie what he would do if he had 24 hours of perfect health. Morrie says he would eat good food and go dancing and swimming. Mitch is then surprised that it would be something so normal, and then realizes that that is the point - most people would want to do something extraordinary, but Morrie just wants to have a good day, one that most people would take for granted.

I did internet research on Thus Spake Zarathustra, the book in which Nietzsche posed the question of identical life. I found some excerpts of it here. I also did research on Nietzsche himself: "Nietzsche's whole philosophy can be seen as an attempt to answer this one question: How do we live in a world without something (a God) that guarantees that life has meaning? In 1882 Nietzsche finally conceded that God is dead, and so began his long philosophical quest to find a non-religious answer to the "meaning of life" and to escape the feelings of despair that followed his loss of faith in Christianity (Turnbull 140)."

I wanted to see what people would actually say when posed with these questions. These are some of the questions I asked, and some answers people gave (Online survey). For the full list of questions and answers, see HW 30 - Interviews.


If you had to live your life over and over again, for eternity, would you be happy?

"The same life lived over and over would quickly become a complete nightmare."

"oh heck yes, because I could remember ALL the mistakes/regrets from the first time around, and change those the second time, and so on and so forth. I could literally build my perfect life. Eventually though, once I felt I got it "right" and had a life I felt I could not possibly make better, I'd be done."

"Only if I knew what would happen ahead of time so I can make any changes ahead of time as dictated by necessity. If I can make changes to my past, then my future should be altered accordingly. But, I really do think that's asking for the impossible."

If you had one day of your life that you had to live over and over again forever, what day would it be?

"The time when I won a singing competition-- however my drive for variety would have to be deprogrammed from my mind."

"The time me and my late mother went to the fair, I was eight, she died when I was 13."

"I think it would be one of those Saturdays when I visited my parents, and we sat at the kitchen table eating cookies and drinking coffee, looking at the newspaper and just talking. They're gone now, and I miss them very much."


What do you want to do before you die?

"Go to the pyramids, go to Japan, and go visit my best friend in Egypt."

"Live to at least make something useful out of myself. Whether it's to help another person or group of people."

"Save a life."

 It seemed that the only reason people would want to live their life over and over again would be to improve on it. I don't think anyone came to the realization that one would hope for when asking this question - the realization that they were happy or unhappy with their life, that they were not doing what they wanted, etc. However, when people were asked what day they would want to live over and over (this question was sort of a combination of Nietzsche's and Mitch's), the answers were more sentimental - Morrie would have appreciated them, as they had everything to do with happiness and being with people you love.

I asked people what they wanted to do before they died simply to see what people found important to accomplish in life - something else discussed in Tuesdays With Morrie. This was another area where people's answers seemed to clash with the book's expectation of what they would say - most people mentioned something about wanting to make a difference, whereas Morrie seemed to imply people are solely motivated by the acquisition of material possessions.

From doing this survey, I learned that opinions presented in books about dominant social practices surrounding illness and dying aren't always true. After reading Tuesdays With Morrie, I formed the opinion that people are motivated by possessions more then anything. However, after doing the survey and reading the dozens of answers that talked about family and friends, I realized that this isn't necessarily true.

Works Cited:


Yalon, Irving D. Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Fear of Death. Jossey - Bass. San Francisco. 2008.

Albom, Mitch. Tuesdays With Morrie. Doubleday. New York. 1997.

Turnbull, Neil. Get a Grip on Philosophy. Time Life Books. 1998.

http://praxeology.net/zara.htm