What are you so afraid of?

Today we finished watching Tuesdays with Morrie in sociology. The movie is about a man dying of a disease that is killing him from the bottom up. He knows he has been given a unique opportunity to teach his final lesson, and as a sociology teacher, he feels as if he must.
Throughout the movie, Mitch is asked why he's so afraid of death. I think in America our first instinct is exactly the same as his; to say "What? I'm not afraid of death!" When really we struggle to get the word out. We lie to ourselves because we don't want to admit our weakness to others, or even ourselves, as if that is going to make a difference.
I met a man named Matt Kehn one time on a retreat with my church. Matt is a missionary in Africa working incessantly to provide those less fortunate than he is with a better life. Looking at him, Americans would say he is happy and finds value in his work, and he is, though one thing he said to me I will never forget.
"I'm not afraid of dying. If I got hit by a bus walking across the street today it would be the best day of my life."
I know what you're thinking, what is wrong with this guy?! But Matt went on to explain it further. He explained that because of his faith, he knows where he's going. He knows that one day he's going to die, but he has accepted that it's outside of his control. In many of our lives we look at death as being terrifying and dying early as being a bad thing. It really took Matt being that blunt about death to show me that at that point in my life I was afraid of death. It took me a long time to see what the point of what he was saying really was, but now I understand: being afraid of death isn't going to stop it. It isn't within our control, even as the all powerful Americans that we see ourselves as.
It's just like what Morrie said, it isn't about dying, it's about living, and living your life the best way you can. Not for yourself or your own pleasure, but for other people and their well being.

American Values

This week in sociology we talked about how the values of your culture shape you as a person. Americans tend to think of themselves as being so individualistic and so unique and separate from things around them, when really the culture around them is what helps make them that way. A way that I have seen this happening for me is in music. Bands always want people to see them as being different than other bands in some way, but when they try to be individuals, many times they look to what popular artists have been doing recently.