Currently resting at a picnic table in the shade of a tree, re-reading a chapter of a paperback copy of Death by philosophy professor Shelly Kagan. A light breeze keeps ruffling the pages of the book.

“What should we think of the nature of death? How should the knowledge of our mortality affect the way we live?”

It’s an eminently readable book – slightly pedantic in a way that is actually helpful instead of annoying. Accessible to an audience that hasn’t studied much philosophy. The thought experiments are silly but intellectually engaging, without being overly challenging for me to think through as I lazily skim through the paragraphs.

I do my best reading in late summer.

I imagine the shape of the beloved, whimsical scholar who wrote this book. He would be sitting cross-legged in the grass under the tree, much like the way he tends to sit cross legged on the desks in the lecture halls of Yale. His imaginary presence – skinny, a little rumpled, alert, enthusiastically curious – is comforting and helpful. What is it to read the writing of somebody else except to spend time with their thoughts? It’s almost like a conversation.

I like the guy. I think he would approve of my choice to spend time outside today.

I return, over and over again, to these questions I have about death. This is not a morbid curiosity – I have been there and done that and I have since got better, thank you. I just want to know. Even if I don’t arrive at any definitive answers, at least I’d like to spend more time pondering these questions and exploring the depths to which this curiosity can take you.

In some ways, I find it easier to look for answers to these questions outside of the weird confines of academia, with its structure and deadlines and its strict conventions and the pressure to participate in a big scholarly discussion by constantly demonstrating my reading comprehension skills and my spirit of inquiry to my elders and my peers. The pressure of that world is intense. Stressful.

I would rather just sit outside in the shade under a tree and read a book and think about life. And death. And why any of it matters.

I return, over and over again, to these questions – and somewhat doubt my ability to do anything in particular with this “research” or learning, my ability to stick to a project of inquiry in the long run.

But I keep on returning.

So this time I decide to begin with the Kagan book and see where it goes.