Desmond Morris - Contemplating death and the afterlife (37/37)

To listen to more of Desmond Morris’s stories, go to the playlist:    • Desmond Morris - Cheating death even befor...  

Born in the UK in 1928, Desmond Morris is a zoologist, writer and artist. Having created and presented programmes for TV on animal behaviour, he has gone on to write a series of books on the same topic beginning with the best-seller, ‘The Naked Ape’. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2014]

TRANSCRIPT: If you, if you contemplate death, you... if... in my case what happens is that I make jolly sure that every day I have a full... as full a day as I can manage. And I also tailor my life, I don't... for example, a few years ago, I gave up lecturing and public events. I won't do public events anymore. I made this decision and stuck to it. People get very cross. Oh, you must come and give a talk, you must... you know, and so on. I won't do it.

I decided that the things I really loved doing are painting pictures and writing books, apart from just enjoying myself in other ways. But, I mean, those are the two activities that I care about and that's what I've limited myself to. And people say, oh, fancy you writing books at your age. But I don't do the other things, you see. I don't do... I don't go to social events the way that so many people do, and I don't belong to... well, I may be a member of societies but I don't... I'm not active. I keep away from public events and keep away from things where I have to lecture to a large audience. I don't mind sitting here in my library, talking, because this is... this is where I feel relaxed, at home. But I think when you reach my age, you have to, you have to restrict things a little bit and then... and do the things you really love doing, but going on doing them at full tilt. I work every night until about 4:00am. I rise... I get my sleep, I rise late, but I like working late at night because it's completely peaceful and I can paint or write then without any interruption.

And my own attitude towards death is that when it happens, everything just stops. I don't... I wish I could believe in... it would be nice to believe in an afterlife, but I find it hard to conceive of one. And I can quite see how people of religious faith find it comforting to think of an afterlife. In fact, it was one of the earliest inventions of the human imagination, was to create an afterlife thousands of years ago and it has been a comfort ever since. But it's also been a curse because people now are being told that if they will blow themselves up and take a lot of unbelievers with them, they'll have a lovely time in the afterlife. So by being promised – what is it? – 15 virgins or something, I can't remember what it is now, but you're promised all sorts of goodies in the afterlife if you'll blow yourself up. This is... this is a terrible distortion of that. And... but on the other hand, just a gentle belief in an afterlife is something that I'm sure brings comfort to people. It's a comfort I don't have because I can't conceive of another existence of that sort. So I'm sad that I shan't be around, but equally I'm very glad that I've had a full life because I haven't held back in my life, I haven't been cautious – I've taken risks and enjoyed a very varied and active life and one that I've enjoyed enormously. And there are so many questions about this little planet I'd still like to ask and try to answer which I won't get a chance to do which is sad. But there you go.