Socrates speaking on Death.

In wake of the two-year anniversary of my dear friend, Stephen Jon Ellenberger's death, and the death of three Marine Corps poolees on their way to process into the Marine Corps, I'd like to share a quote from the wise philosopher on the matter of Death.

"Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is
Death either a good or nothing: - a profound sleep.
great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two
things - either death is a state of nothingness and utter
unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and
migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you
suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the
sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be
an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in
which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to
compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then
were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the
course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I
think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the
great king will not find many such days or nights, when
compared with the others. Now if death be of such a nature,
I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night.
But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men
say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges,
How blessed to have a just judgment passed on us;
to converse with Homer and Hesiod; to see the heroes of Troy,
and to continue the search after knowledge in another world!
can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in
the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice
in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give no
judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and
Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in
their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What
would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and
Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me
die again and again. I myself, too, shall have a wonderful
interest in there meeting and conversing with Palamedes, and
Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other ancient hero who has
suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be
small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with
theirs. Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search
into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in the
next; and I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be
wise, and is not. What would not a m an give, O judges , to be
able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or
Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women
too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with
them and asking them questions! In another world they do not
put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not. For
besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if
what is said is true."

R.I.P SJE 4-1-08 / R.I.P Fallen Brothers


Live, Love, Rejoice.