Death as Your Teacher

Like most people, I have always been afraid of death. One of my biggest fears in life that I stress about and overthink is death. One of my professors for my Psychology classes had us write a paper on the way death is your teacher. We had to come up with who we wanted to greet us in the coming of death. We had to then relate that to how we see it tie in with relationships. This paper was hard for me to write and so my writing wasn’t as great as it could have been, but it is genuine. This is how I see death as my teacher.

This is my work:

Death as Your Teacher

My death teacher stands at about fifteen feet tall, with very long legs and a neck so long that it makes you look twice. His head is topped with bony horns and his tail is tipped with a tuft of fur. He has a short mane that runs down the length of his long neck. He has tan spots that run up and down his whole body. His name is Ollie and he is indeed a giraffe and I see him just as he is, the most amazing giraffe that I have ever laid eyes on. Ollie the giraffe is my death teacher because giraffes symbolize something that I try to live by every single day; self-acceptance and self-love. Ollie is proud of his appearance of being different and knows that he is one of the most unique animals in the world. He makes me think about myself and how I should be proud of my beauty and how of course I look different from everyone else, but it doesn’t mean that I am less than anyone else.

We are all going to die at some point in our life, that is something that is inevitable. Humans are aware that we can’t run away from death, yet almost all of us are still scared of death. Personally, even if I invite my death teacher in I am still going to be scared to die until I die. I would like a significant other that has the same meaning of life as me because I feel like it would make us more compatible as well as on the same level of life. My death teacher could strengthen my relationships just by simply giving me the confidence that I need in myself. I believe that the more confidence you have in yourself before or while in a relationship it makes the relationship that much better. The more confidence you have in yourself, the happier you are with yourself and you can’t be happy with someone else unless you’re happy with yourself first. 

Sometimes writing about something that you are fearful of doesn’t come out as well as you think but it comes out real and genuine and that’s okay. I overcame a sense of my fear writing about this and to me that’s what matters most. 

Thank you for reading, 

Kelly Caminske

• death
• fear
• overcoming
• scared