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Death and Empathy

I was climbing, and didn't realize where I was, or how out of shape I was. I found myself way up in big wall in Yosemite... I got to a stopping point where several people were just hanging out, but I realized I was in way over my head. As I was thinking this another guy was just starting to head down- I few moments later we heard that he had fallen and died. It didn't seem to real to me or important to me, but at the same time I could feel the last of my strength running out, and my hands getting slippery on the holds.

It would have made sense to ask for help, or at least tie myself in, but instead I decided to go back down alone and unroped. As I did this I was pretty sure I would slip and fall in the next few minutes. I wasn't too happy about this, but it was a comfort that I was so high that I didn't need to worry about a slow or painful death.

Somehow I must have made it down, because I found myself walking around town wondering how I could be so uncaring about the other climbers death, or even my own. I decided to imaging that instead it had been my sister or my father who had died. When I did this I had a strong, lasting, and very realistic emotional and physical reaction. Why should I be effected more by imagining my fathers death, than an actual persons death, or the possibility of my own? I was very bothered by this, but felt as though experiencing my fathers imagined death was a helpful learning tool.

Feeling slightly better about myself I decided to pay my respects to my friend Settelmeyer who had know the climber who had died. When I got to his house I found that he had turned a whole truck into a hippy art memorial to his friend. I was again amazed at the depth to which other people seemed able to experience and express their feelings. Why did life not effect me in such strong ways?

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Later in the dream I was "awake" and talking to my friend Larkin about this dream and it's meaning. He's out of town for the month, but he and his girlfriend Kate had read this post and it had been important enough that he'd appeared in Antarctica to talk to me about it.

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