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Showing Original Post only (View all)Roger Ebert: "I Do Not Fear Death" [View all]
Last edited Fri Apr 5, 2013, 10:29 AM - Edit history (1)
http://www.salon.com/2011/09/15/roger_ebertTHURSDAY, SEP. 15, 2011 11:01 AM EDT
I do not fear death
I will pass away sooner than most people who read this, but that doesn't shake my sense of wonder and joy
BY ROGER EBERT
Roger Ebert was always a great friend of Salon's. We're deeply saddened by reports of his death, and are re-printing this essay, from his book "Life Itself: A Memoir," which we think fans will take particular comfort in reading now.
I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You cant say it wasnt interesting. My lifetimes memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.
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What I expect to happen is that my body will fail, my mind will cease to function and that will be that. My genes will not live on, because I have had no children. I am comforted by Richard Dawkins theory of memes. Those are mental units: thoughts, ideas, gestures, notions, songs, beliefs, rhymes, ideals, teachings, sayings, phrases, clichés that move from mind to mind as genes move from body to body. After a lifetime of writing, teaching, broadcasting and telling too many jokes, I will leave behind more memes than many. They will all also eventually die, but so it goes.
- snip -
That does a pretty good job of summing it up. Kindness covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didnt always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.
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No worries about no children, Roger left us so much. Rest in peace you dear soul.
mountain grammy
Apr 2013
#9
I was at a critic's review pre-showing in Chicago and that is what he was doing
lunasun
Apr 2013
#28
How many are able to write such a moving eulogy a couple of years before their death
tavalon
Apr 2013
#32