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The Beginner’s Guide to the End
A Book Everyone Should Read
There isn’t a single textbook for life, nor is there one for love, and I think that’s fine; I can live with that. There are many for parenting; but not being a parent myself, I can live without them too.
However, what none of us should really live or die without — yet most of us do, anyway — is a book about dying.
It is surprising — for a phenomenon so intrinsic to every being — that Death remain shrouded in secrecy, ignorance, doubt, and misinformation; however, given the human ego’s propensity for attachment to things — including life itself — fear of separation, either from life or from loved ones, is the prime factor in making death a taboo, often leading to a slew of negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, guilt, bitterness, anger and denial.
The good news?
One such manual — and I call it “manual” intentionally — just came out last year; ironically enough, just before the world went south and the death toll went through the roof.
Although in my opinion “The Beginner’s Guide to the End” by BJ Miller and Shoshana Berger should have been Book of the Year, sadly it was not, which does not surprise me.
For a supposedly intelligent species which has been doing death for as long as we have, we…
