Death as an Advisor

Death is a subject that people avoid, maybe because they are afraid of it, mostly because they are ignorant about it. Without knowing what will come after death how do we know if our life in this world is better than what comes after this life? What is there to prevent or fear? Gilamesh’s adventure with Utnapishtim shows us that man has always and will always try to defeat death, control the unknown, searching eternity. “Time after time the river has risen and flooded. The insect leaves the cocoon but to live a minute. How long is the eye to look at the sun? From the very beginning nothing at all has lasted.” -Pg. 64 Going against the flowing river currents all of your life is harder than accepting they will take you to the sea. It is better to have death as your ally, to live a more conscious life, than killing your life by fearing and fighting the inevitable reality of THE END. Through this tablet one gains perspective on how our civilization will come to its end, as everything and everyone, it has to follow a cycle of life and death. “There they established that there is life and death. The day of death is set, though not made known.” –Pg. 64 All of our activities follow a certain pattern that we all know about. That is the reason why death is so mysterious, we just don’t know how, where, when and why will it happen and even more amazing if there is anything after that unavoidable event.

In tablet ten, we can understand what was the author’s perspective on the QUESTions. I would say that he thought that we were here to fulfill a process, to accept death as the final product of our lives. He also probably thought that we got here through a process of evolution of our concepts, a change in our ways of life through competition with other species. I say this because of Utnapishtim’s story of how he got to be a god. Since this story shows how our society grew and was erased it probably means that we are always changing our goal in life, our perspective around the idea of death. Through Gilgamesh’s last words, he explains the whole concept the author tries to show. He uses Gilgamesh’s city as an example of what we should do with our world. “measure Uruk, the city of Gilgamesh.” –Pg. 82 As he asks the boatman to measure his city, which was his habitat, his way of life, he asks the reader to measure our world, to not be frightened by the idea of death, to grow consciousness and live fully by gaining perspective of what we all are responsible for, for a short time at least, our life, our planet, our world.