The life and death are always in touch. Some psychologists (and first was Sigmund Freud) say that two strong feelings always exist in human beings. Those feelings are two eternal instincts and powerful forces ― instinct of living and instinct of destruction. In the end, the nature by itself is all about dying and living, destroying and building, isn’t it? Those instincts also exist deep inside our beings and we cannot fight them.
Modern psychologists were not the first ones who discovered those two strong forces inside of our being. In Ancient Greece people called them Eros and Thanatos.
We all know those feelings because they are part of our everyday lives. We feel fear when something represents a threat to our life. For example, when we are on the street and suddenly we find ourselves in danger because of traffic, we immediately feel that we have to save ourselves. When someone tries to hit us in the face or to hurt us in some other way, we try to protect ourselves by using our hands like some kind of barrier. This is the instinct of living. We want to do anything just to stay alive. We can even leave our friend and expose him to danger just to save ourselves. It’s in our nature. But, everything in this world has its own opposite.
The other instinct is the instinct of destruction. We also sometimes feel angriness and hate, strong emotions which can lead us to hurt someone or even ourselves. It is difficult to control that feeling. If there is no law and justice, a lot of people would be maybe able to hurt others. And, unfortunately, there are a lot of people who already did that. They couldn’t control their feelings and they committed murder or suicide.
Eros first was the god of love, passion and sexual attraction. Old Greeks believed that he was the son of goddess Aphrodite (goddess of beauty and love) and god Ares (god of war). Some of the people believed that he was born from the egg of world and that he doesn’t have mother and father at all. He represented a new life. People imagined him like a blind little boy with wings. In Roman mythology, his name was Cupid. His symbol was a bow with love arrows and he could force everyone to fall in love with this powerful weapon. Some others sources presented Eros as a young and strong man with athletic body.
However, in the modern world, Eros represents the force of living, love, birth, creation, sexual power and desire. He is the force which keeps us alive and connects us with other people. We feel that we need some other being. We need to be loved and give the love to others.
But, Eros isn’t alone. He always has a companion ― Thanatos. I think that every one of us felt both of those instincts deep inside. If you think that’s impossible, just try to remember last time when you had great sex experience. You wanted to scream and you said to your partner: “You killed me“, didn’t you? In the end, we all know that feeling when we think that it was so amazing that we could easily die. And if someone said to us that we will die, we would do it again, no matter what. I will stop here because I am scared that this article can easily become an article about sadism and masochism.
Thanatos is always nearby Eros. They are brothers. One represents the life and creation and another death and destruction. Hesiod thought that Thanatos was the son of the Nyx (goddess of the night) and the Erebus (god of darkness). He believed that Thanatos is the brother of the Hypnos (god of the sleep). In the art, Thanatos is always depicted with Eros or with Hypnos. People often imagined him as a man dressed in black with sword.
John William Waterhouse │Source
Usually, our instinct for a living is so strong that we don’t want to die. The force of living can be stronger than the force of death. That happened with Sisyphus. He was the only men who succeed to trick the Death (Thanatos). When the Thanatos came for his soul, he cheated him and tied him. Immediately people all over the world stopped dying. But, in the end, he got punished for this. He ended up in the Tartarus and his eternal punishment was to roll a big stone up and down.
However, nobody could cheat the death. In the end, we all have to leave this Earth. But, as long as we are alive, deep inside of our being we will feel two opposite forces ― the instinct of living and instinct of destruction. Everywhere around us, there are examples of that. Especially in nature. If you look at the mantis, you will see that this insect also has two strong instincts. The female is going to eat male alive immediately after they finish their love act.
A lot of poets and painters presented Life and Death in touch. For example, famous Spanish poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, wrote a poem Balcony in which dying man is watching young child eating oranges and strong and healthy man while he is harvesting wheat. In the end, just remember the scene from popular serial “Vikings“, when the Lagertha makes a sacrifice to the gods by killing one young man and at the same time her son, Bjorn, makes love with Astrid. In the two scenes, you can see love and death, the force of living and force of dying.
Everything is about love and death. We are always between Eros and Thanatos.
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