Stephen Cave starts off with his speech discussing death and what we, as people, think about it and what we tell ourselves to cope with it. The four categories of stories that he states we tell ourselves are:
Elixirs: In almost every myth/story there is some type of elixir, whether it be the elixir for life or the fountain of youth. People believe there is some elixir that will give them immortality. We even have this in science, some people believe we will eventually achieve immortality scientifically.
Resurrection: A belief that states we will be resurrected like Jesus Christ, or that we will be resurrected in some way or another. People also rely on science for this, saying we can freeze our body than unfreeze it later in life.
Soul: The belief that we have souls and will live on through our soul forever, even after death. People also believe science can do this as well by putting our memories into a computer that lives on forever.
Legacy: Legacy is leaving behind something of yours or making an impact on others. Social media makes this incredibly easy, but people can also do this through making an actual impact on the world or having children carry on their legacy.
Resurrection, when I think of it, I think of the Biblical resurrection. That if we believe in God/Jesus we will be resurrected in the coming of Jesus. I believe that this is the most common resurrection story but we also see a minus of it in today’s society (zombies, for example) so this story has always freaked me out a bit.
In Egyptian myth, the Egyptians would wrap their most powerful leaders in linen to preserve them for their eternal afterlife. They believed that the soul would carry over. This was so that their body wouldn’t perish and they would be able to have it with them in the afterlife. They also had important items and food buried/offered to them so they could also have that as well.
Legacy is a very important attribute in today’s society, and we seem to have many who believe in legacy. Many people have children so their last name is carried or, kind of like Zeus who slept with many women and had many children to carry on his legacy.
I loved Cave’s speech and agreed with him that our life is a book, and that we should make it great. That we need to make the middle amazing. I thought this was one of the best assignments we have had, because death is inevitable and seeing the coping mechanisms was incredibly interesting.
Hum 115: World Mythology 
Whats your personal coping mechanism when it comes to death?
Which of the four do you lean towards?
Or maybe you have a 5th?
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I have this theory that our brains are on a very short tape-delay – let’s say 5-10 seconds. So we won’t actually experience death because our brains won’t catch up to our body’s experience as we die.
I have no basis for this belief, but I like it.
One of my favorite books about death and grief is Madeline L’Engles “A Ring of Endless Light.” I’ve read the novel multiple times since I was a child, and this passage has always helped me accept my limited understanding of life and death:
“Vicky, there’re probably lots of planets besides us with people on them, don’t you think?”
. . .
“John says we’d be pretty megalomanic if we thought we were the only inhabited planet in all of the solar systems in all of the galaxies.”
“Mega-”
“Megalomanic. It means thinking you’re the most important.”
He nodded, looking solemn. “So maybe there’s a planet where nobody has any eyes.”
I looked at him, and I thought his own eyes were shadowed, and I wanted to hug him and pull him onto my lap the way I sometimes did when he was little. But he was looking as though he felt very grown up.
“Could be, I guess.”
“Well, if nobody had any eyes, they’d all get along all right without them, wouldn’t they?”
“Sure, I guess they’d compensate.”
“They’d get along with hearing and touch, but they wouldn’t have any idea what anything looked like.”
I wasn’t sure what he was driving at, but I knew it was important to him. “No, they wouldn’t.”
“And if someone from our planet went to the planet where no one had eyes, and tried to describe something to them-the way rain looks falling on the ocean, or the lighthouse beam at night, or the sunrise-it couldn’t be done could it?”
I tried to understand. “No. It just wouldn’t be possible. If you didn’t have eyes, if you lived in a world of touch and sound, then nobody could tell you what anything looked like. Why, Rob?”
. . .
“Well, maybe when the people on the planet with no eyes die, then maybe they get sent to a planet where there are eyes. But you couldn’t tell them about it ahead of time.”
“That’s right.”
“So, maybe when we die, we’ll get something as important as sight, but because we don’t know what it is, nobody could tell us about it now, any more than we could explain sight to the people on a planet with no eyes.”
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