Pack them in?

I have a classmate at taiji class who travels on an average of more than 4 times a year for leisure and has been to exotic places like Sudan, Nepal, South Africa etc. When she is not travelling she runs a factory and works 12 hours daily for 6 days a week and often goes back to office on Sundays after Taiji. She envies my semi retirement lifestyle but laments that for her retirement is not an option as her business sustains many people and looks forward to the day when her son can finally take over.

This morning she complained about weakness in one leg during taiji and let out a long sigh. I thought it must be quite bad and asked her how she felt. Instead she replied "So many more places to go. Don't know whether I have the chance".

2 days ago I listened to one of many podcasted lectures by Shelly Kagan (Yale professor) on the philosophy of death entitled "How to live given the certainty of death". He talked about how some people need to pack as much as possible in their lifetime given that our lifespan is limited. According to him, if given a choice most people will choose a relatively shorter life packed with good stuff to one long draggy century of "barely worth living" stuff. It also creates anxiety in some in that there is not much room for "do-overs", ie. you don't have the luxury of immortality to try a lot of things to decide what is the thing most worthwhile ie. make your life most valuable. So given the constraints, some may choose to pack life with easily attained pleasures "eat, drink and be merry" whilst others go for the "big potatoes" (lifetime achievements) whilst some settle for a mix of both the above in varying degrees.

The above however is based on a fundamental assumption that life is good and it is a matter of strategy how and what good stuff you want to pack in. He described it as a mainly Western outlook. What if, however, the assumption is life is no good and death is no loss? He described this as an outlook present in Eastern thoughts. He mentioned about the Buddhist concept that life is suffering and to free oneself from such sufferings one has to detach oneself from these good stuff. (The constant desire of good stuff and their impermanence when achieved also cause suffering as I see it). In addition death is terrifying insofar as one worries that it is the end of oneself. However, if there is no attachment to self, there is nothing to loose.

The professor however described himself as a child of the West who does not accept such a negative outlook. Instead he quoted a phrase from a poem which goes like "Once I lived like the gods, and more is not needed".

"Eat drink and be merry"
"Once I lived like the gods, and more is not needed"
"If there is no attachment to self, there is nothing to loose"
All the above are rich fodder for thoughts.