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Yeah, I know you come here to read thoughtful essays. Everybody does. So, here's a link to a thoughtful essay I encountered pretty much by chance while surfing the net. I like this guy's attitudes--but then, I've pretty much said the same thing for more than 20 years, so it's probably a case of GMTA.
[url="http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/9318/death.html"]http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/9318/death.html[/url]

hmm... A thoughtful essay in a thoughtless world... How interesting...

Death is a profound subject. I worked in a nursing home for a time and I participated in a death watch for a patient, since none of her family cared to come and be with her. One of the signs that someone is dying is that their breathing becomes erratic, something called Cheyne-Stokes respiration. The thing that struck me is that the whole process was much less dramatic than I was led to believe. Except for her breathing, it was almost like she was asleep, as if her life was slowly beginning to slip away from her. It was unnerving to me, but looking back I don't think it was because of anything in the situation. I think that it was because of my own programming and the things that I had been taught about death and dying.

There was another aspect to it as well. Sitting with someone as they are dying is an intensely intimate act. That and to sit in the presence of something so naked and unpretentious is challenging. But I find it sad that something as natural as the ending of one's life has been distorted into something so forbidding and frightening. Perhaps if each person had the opportunity to sit with death on its own terms, we could make our own conclusions . And our own peace.

This one has always been a favourite of mine...

NYU Entrance Essay
by Hugh Gallagher

This is an actual essay that a guy used to get himself accepted at NYU 2
or 3 years ago.
The author of this essay, Hugh Gallagher, now attends NYU

3A. ESSAY
IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE
APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: ARE THERE
ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE
REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have
been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more
efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban
refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently.
Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot
bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute
Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and
an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended
a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I
play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous
documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard.
I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical
appliances free of charge.

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics
worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't
perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been
caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New
Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My
deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles.
Children trust me.

I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I
once read Paradise Lost, Moby ****, and David Copperfield in one day and
still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the
exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed
several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep,
I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated
with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of
physics do not apply to me.

I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On
weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago
I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made
extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I
breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving
competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played
Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.

But I have not yet gone to college

"When most people had a more than nominal attachment to formal religion, the Church gave them that sense of connectedness, and helped them make sense of tragedy and death. Now that most people's convictions about reality are almost totally consumed by time and matter and secular enterprise, with their conception of an afterlife hazy and nebulous at best, death becomes impossible to cope with philosophically. When death comes calling in wholesale numbers, as with the Swissair crash, it is impossible to conveniently ignore, which throws the irreligious for a loop, with their only ground for fallback being the shallow soil of emotion and sentimentality."

Some fair comments but this does not impress.

Religion is not without its fair share of blood-letting, itself the cause of death. I would have thought that a lot of peoples' hang ups about death were because of their religous beliefs.

*Sigh* This fellow's views would have been more weighty were it not for his barely concealed bias.