The concluding part of "thanatophobia and the other side of death"   Yahaya Habeeb Kayode

Many are the factors that constitute to thanatophobia; meanwhile, the few aforementioned factors are its major actors. Most of us, if not all, frown at death. When a beloved or illustrious person in our community is announced dead, the whole community would echo with rigorous and energetic wails and cries, flood of tears spring down from our swollen eyeballs to our saturated cheeks, the children gleeful cat and bull chase games are ceased and market activities are temporarily stopped. Even rats among other creatures, quiver with fear at the point of death. However, worthy is it, to express the fact that death, despite the aforementioned factors of thanatophobia, has it good side.
Death can be likened to a sword which has two sides; it has the good side and the unfavourable side. However, the unfavourable phase of death has become explicit to man over the years while the good side (the other side) remains always either untold or seldom told, therefore, it becomes necessary to ask ourselves some questions. If there is nothing like death in this earth, what could be the identifiable implications? If everyone is immortal what would the earth looks like? What have been the major impacts of death on human beings? Giving answers to these questions, one has to be mindful of the positive things which death offers. I shall clearly state the obvious again, what we might know but yet ignore what we might have perceived but yet unable to recognize, what stays so close to our eyes, yet our eyes usually look above or beyond, but not precisely at them. These are the impacts or significances of death.
One of the significances of death which man has to reckon with is the fact that death is God’s will. It is a widely accepted belief that God has the power to do anything, anywhere and at any point in time. The common saying that man proposes, God disposes also justifies the fact that whatever happens to man is God’s intent. Although, it has been a false perception that death is a devil that delight in the sorrow of man. The perception is borne out of man’s despise towards death. Death is nothing but a general destiny of man written by God. God as a playwright had characterized the end of man’s life cycle with death. If He doesn’t want man to die, he wouldn’t have created or devised anything such as death. Death has been part and parcel of man as at the time he was firstly created to the time when the world would go in into extinction.

Religious functionaries have been painstakingly putting-up heartfelt efforts to ensure that man’s sins do not become incessant. Unceasing admonition among others is one of the measures they use in achieving this aim. When people listen to admonitions, urging them to indulge in righteous deeds and refrain from unrighteous ones, they reflect on it. Fortunately, the reflection they do have on the admonition, results in helping them reduce the rate with which they commit sins and increase the scale of their righteous deeds. It is in this sense that it becomes necessary to stress the fact that death also performs the role of admonishing man. To bring clearer picture into our minds about what we mean by that, trials of the burial ground or cemetery shall be looked into. No matter how heartless a person might seems to be, so far he is still with his senses, the situation of things in the burial ground or cemetery would weigh fear on him and makes him change positively in one way or the other. For example, if one steps in a burial ground and stays therein for not less than thirty minutes, one would experience some unfolding scenes therein such as; the cleansing of soulless bodies, collections of mutilated parts of lifeless bodies and among others, the processes of laying corpses in the bowel of the heat-presenting earth. All these things tend to collectively admonish man and influenced him psychologically.

Death is also significant to man, in as much as it repel man’s urge to indulge in bad deeds. The certainty that death can pay him a visit anywhere and at any point in time prepares him always and makes him ethical conscious. Assuming that there is nothing like death which comes along with heavenly prosecution, the world would probably become ‘a stage embedded with sinful characters that are also casted for sinful scenes’ and among others, the good nature of man would not be endeavoured to be restored.
 With death claiming billions of lives in every nook and cranny of the planet earth, man’s economic problem is always hinged on over-population. So we could ask ourselves this questions, without the prevalent of death what would the whole world look like? If our great grand fathers or ancestors like some people refer to are alive till this very moment, and our wives and daughters are still giving birth, is there going to be space for us to dwell or resources to enjoy our lives? These riddle are meant to be unraveled by every one of us. Imagine how Nigeria which has been always recognised as one of the over-populated countries in the world would be brimmed with souls. No government would dare carry out population censor. Therefore, from this hypothesis we can infer once more that death is significant to man.

Finally, it should be mentioned the fact that the evolution of history itself was achievable because of the prevalent of death in our world. It is a fact that cannot be disputed that death is one of the major things that helped man to access and discover the essentials of history. In the world today, we discuss, study and relish the life times of so many prophets, legends, tyrants, heroes, unimaginable beings et.c. We also study and enjoy the history of events, such as wars, ceremony, coups, natural disaster etc and places, still in existence and those which are not even in existence anymore. If Julio Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, Confucius, Dalai Lama XIV, George Washington, Lao Tzu,  mahatma Gandhi, Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Nelson Mandela, Plato, Sigmund Freud, Socrates, sun Tzu and many others still live on, then there would be nothing such as their  history but probably news about them. If man is immortal, history as a word or field cannot exist and the knowledge and joy we derive from historical records are not likewise going to exist.

Therefore, it is to be borne in our minds that death, despite its known plights which constitute to man’s thanatophobia (fear of death) also has the other side which is in no doubt, significant to the world of man. If man’s is ethical conscious, then he need not fear death. Therefore the cure for death is death itself.


Written by YAHAYA HABEEB KAYODE (JAYPEE D-POET).

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