Guiding Questions:

1.Have you thought about death or dying? How did you feel when you were thinking about them?

Yes.Thinking about death or dying makes me totally scared. But I know there is no eternal life. Everyone will die one day，and I have to accept the reality. What I should do is to seize the day.

2. How knowing "then you die" would affect the way we live? What is the sunny side of death?

Knowing "then you die" we give a fuck about something more important in our life.

The sunny side of death is untangling our addictions, identifying and confronting our own entitlement, accepting responsibility for our own problems—suffering through our fears and uncertainties, accepting our failures and embracing rejections—it has all been made lighter by the thought of our own death. The more we peer into the darkness, the brighter life gets, the quieter the world becomes, and the less unconscious resistance we feel to, well, anything.

3. Did you have a transformational moment growing up? Something you would consider a wake-up call?

Yes. My mom suffered from cerebral infaction after I passed the College Entrance Examination. Fortunately, she survived and recovered gradually. I realized,facing disease or even death, what we can do is extremely limited. So living in the moment and taking every day as the last day of my life will make me more active. Certainly, in our spare time, we should often greet our parents and live life to its fullest each day.

Words and expressions

1. The wails and the screams and the snot.

wails: a cry of sorrow and grief.

造句: Women in that town wailed for their dead.

2. when I came to the startling realization that if there really is no reason to do anything, then there is also no reason to notdo anything.

startling: Something that is so different, unexpected, or remarkable that people react to it with surprise.

造句: Sometimes the results may be rather startling.

3. When Becker sided with the students and publicly condemned the actions of the dean (again, his boss being Hitleresque and everything), he was, once again, promptly fired.

side with: support, encourage

造句: I side with the opinion that everyone is equal.

4. He spent the next few years bedridden and had little hope of surviving.

bedridden: unable to leave the bed, especially because of old or illness.

造句: He had to spend two months bedridden with an injury.

Reflection

I tell my mind to shut up, and keep inching forward. The more I peer into the darkness, the brighter life gets, the quieter the world becomes, and the less unconscious resistance I feel to, well, anything. You are already great because in the face of endless confusion and certain death, you continue to choose what to give a fuck about and what not to. Confronting the reality of our own mortality is important because it obliterates all the crappy, fragile, superficial values in life.

本章作者由好友Josh的突然死亡的事件展开，结合自身的体会，悲痛万分之余也让他清醒地认识到，既然我们都无法避免死亡，那么所有的担心或愧疚都是没有意义的。于是作者开始努力学习，承担责任，关注更加重要事情。作者说到，生命中最悲惨的时刻，往往会成为我们人生的转折点。

作者也因此更深入地探讨了，只有看透生死，才会抛开那些毫无意义的、脆弱的、肤浅的价值观。经历过生死，才会考虑生命的真正价值。