Die wise
"Die Wise does not offer seven steps for coping with death. It does not suggest ways to make dying easier. It pours no honey to make the medicine go down. Instead, with lyrical prose, deep wisdom, and stories from his two decades of working with dying people and their families, Stephen Jenkinson places death at the center of the page and asks us to behold it in all its painful beauty. Die Wise teaches the skills of dying, skills that have to be learned in the course of living deeply and well. Die Wise is for those who will fail to live forever. Dying well, Jenkinson writes, is a right and responsibility of everyone. It is a moral, political, and spiritual obligation each person owes their ancestors and their heirs. It is not a lifestyle option. It is a birthright and a debt. Die Wise dreams such a dream, and plots such an uprising. How we die, how we care for dying people, and how we carry our dead: this work makes our village life, or breaks it. In the end, Jenkinson's message is not one of despair--he believes learning to love death is in fact one of the most direct ways to love life"-- "A potentially life-changing book for anyone wanting to experience grief and death in a more meaningful way. Grounded in the author's experiences with hundreds of dying people and their families, the book advocates a bold engagement with a part of the human experience that is often more endured than lived"
Stats for nerds
2recommend
5mentions
3people
2021–2025years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I’m 38 and feeling your struggle minus the uber achievement. I do alright, but I still have a mortgage.
I will back up your ketamine hunch, but more generically as psychedelics. Consider a guided approach like Psychedelic Passage, for example. They won’t source for you, but I’m sure you can figure it out. I’m not sure if they’d be the correct folks to guide a ketamine trip but maybe!
It took a lot to convince my wife that I hadn’t lost my mind or desire to support my family. But she eventually understood that it was something I had to do for the good of everyone around me, especially me. Psychedelics aren’t a cure-all, but it’s a great medicine to retool old habits and deeply held beliefs. Your preparation and intention setting is the cornerstone of its efficacy.
One book hit home with me after my first trip: Die Wise by Stephen Jenkinson. I highly recommend it even though I found the audiobook unlistenable before. It became a significant influence on my life afterward.
The heart of psychedelic power against depression is this: it lets emotion express itself. In therapy, if you haven’t cried with your therapist, then it’s a fucking waste of time. Antidepressants hollow out my emotions and limit their range - helping me to be a more effective automaton. Psychedelics release you from the consequences of crying or feeling idiotic joy. It’s a reacquaintance with a youthful mindset.
One last thought: I went into psychedelics hoping that I’d feel the train cars of my life click into place on the tracks. But what I’ve discovered is that there are no tracks, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It took a while to appreciate that. One saying goes: you get what you need, not what you want.
I sincerely hope that you find relief! Bring your whole self to the table, and I believe you’ll find that you’re enough.
- I’m vulnerable to recency bias. The books that my recent life has pivoted on are Die Wise and Come of Age by Stephen Jenkinson. Both books are journeys that bedevil any effort to summarize. I highly recommend listening to the author read them as audiobooks - the words move too quickly on the page, and the author is kindling a modern spoken tradition. The early going to Die Wise was difficult, but my mind gave way to curiosity and they stole my heart and mind away from the rat race.
- Die Wise by Stephen Jenkinson is a masterpiece. I thought I had a pretty good relationship with death until I read this book. It starts out slow because that’s the thesis of the book: go slow and pay attention; be curious and feel emotions deeply without hurrying. He gently and convincingly shakes down concepts that seems beyond reproach like “hope”. Seriously he makes a killer argument against hope. Not that it’s all bad, but rather that it must earn it’s place at the table. Hope, he argues, is like a mortgage. You pay today with a goal of owning a piece of happiness in the future. (Eg Today’s bad because I’ve been told that I’m dying but I hope that I’ll get better with experimental therapy. 99% do not, so it’s better not to mortgage your future on a promise that’s unlikely.) I can’t do the book justice here, but I hope someone reads it because of this recommendation!
- This is a good example of death phobia. Anyone who is interested in research of someone who has faced death head on over 1,000 times should read "Die Wise" by Stephen Jenkinson. He was in charge of end of life care in Canada health care system for a decade. He despises palliative care and thinks it distances us from the reality of death which makes it all the more worse. This article really emphasizes the extents people will go to hide their own death, or deny it.
- Stephen Jenkinson, author of Die Wise and founder of the School of Orphan Wisdom speaks a lot about this. The “wretched anxiety” he observed as head of palliative care in Canada he claims stems from fear of being forgotten. Which is tied to a particular Western failure: not honoring our elders who have died, and the amnesia of cultural memory. His book is a good read, and I think provides an alternative account to the points made in this article.
