¿Acceptance?

Sitting at the ever famous Mean Bean with Lee, our conversation moved to a book I had just finished, "Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury. Of course, we instantly focused on Death. In Bradbury's novel he pits good and evil against each other. One character asks whether or not the evil was death. Bradbury’s answer was:

"But I think it uses Death as a threat. Death doesn't exist. It never did, it never will. But we've drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we've got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing. And the carnival wisely knows we're more afraid of Nothing than we are of Something. You can fight Something. But...Nothing? Where do you hit it? Has it a heart, soul, butt-behind, brain? No, no. So the carnival just shakes a great croupier's cupful of Nothing at us, and reaps us as we tumble back head-over-heals in fright." (204)

I agree with the idea that Death is truly Nothing. The fact that we make it into to something, or try, only embellishes the fear of death itself. As we discussed this in the Mean Bean, Lee brought up an interesting example that I agreed with. Religion is a manifestation of the fear of the imaginary, or what we don't know or understand. It puts words, pictures, and thoughts in place of Nothing. Once our belief of the world is built upon the imaginary, then everything in our lives becomes imaginary, therefore leaving us in an unreal world. We deny ourselves the ability to truly live, to act without thought, to take chances, because within us is built a set of guidelines that our imaginary world created for us.

"So, minute by minute, hour by hour, a lifetime, it never ends, never stops,
you got the choice this second, now this next, and the next after that, be good, be bad, that's what the clock ticks, that's what it says in the ticks. Run swim, or stay hot, run eat or lie hungry. So you stay, but once stayed, Will, you know the secret, don't you? Don't think of the river again. Or the cake. Because if you do, you'll go crazy. Add up all the rivers never swum in, cakes never eaten, and by the time you get my age, Will, it's a lot missed on. But then you console yourself, thinking, the more time in, the more time possibly drowned, or choked on lemon frosting. But then, through plain dumb cowardice, I guess,
maybe you hold off from too much, wait, play it safe." (135)

This hesitancy comes from the imaginary, the simulacra that was created to label and constrict. We've built this up around us to give us comfort, give us Something rather than live in Nothing. We fear what we don't know, so we fill the holes with our imagination and then choose to believe so fervently that we forget that we created its existence ourselves. Maybe in a backward way we are only believing in ourselves, but, now that I've said that I disagree with myself. We create things so we don't have to believe in ourselves. We put labels and imaginary tales on things so we don't have to see them for what they really are and they reflect upon ourself. So what to do with this dilemma of living within the imagination? How to fight Death? How to fight Nothing?
Bradbury combated it with laughter and love. Yes, I do think this is typical and cheesy, but Bradbury did something more with this. He added acceptance of life, which then allowed the laughter and love.

"All because he had accepted everything at last, accepted the carnival,
the hills beyond, the people in the hills, Jim,
Will, and above all himself and all of life." (258)

Is this the right road to take? Acceptance? Perhaps. To accept that Death exists, in all it's Nothingness, gives a person the ability to break from the imaginary world built around them. It allows them to live, to forget about age, decorum, societal presumptions on the correct path. Life. Perhaps. But I guess humanity was made to wonder and never really know.