![]() If saying “rest in peace” or “thoughts and prayers” comforts you, good for you. Saying that you’re praying, on the other hand, is just inoculating yourself against criticism. But what is this tweet-level comment supposed to mean? I think it means “I care.” That’s about it. Those who do not want to make a political statement about guns, terrorists, or nuclear power, but must say something, tend to say “ Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims.” When somebody kills 20 children in Connecticut or 14 people in California or 30 people in Burkina Faso, or when 16,000 people die in Japan after an earthquake, we feel we must say something. ![]() We have other mannerisms and euphemisms around death, especially when it’s ghastly and unthinkable. It’s a shame, but we go on.” (It also means “I don’t want to talk any more about death, I don’t like it.”) Thoughts and prayers “Rest in peace” is a mannerism, because we feel we need to say something - it’s a period at the end of any sentence about death. What it means, basically, is “He’s dead. If you don’t believe in an afterlife at all, then what exactly is “rest in peace” supposed to mean? They’re dead, not resting. But if you believe in heaven and hell, then (and I admit I am out of depth here), isn’t the soul supposed to be either out enjoying itself with all the other good souls or suffering eternal damnation? Where’s the resting? Apparently, “rest in peace” applies to purgatory, which some people believed is where the souls needed to go for a while before The Lord routed them appropriately. Do you believe in purgatory? “Rest in peace” has an old Catholic origin ( Requiescat in pace). The deaths of Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, David Bowie, Alan Rickman, and Glenn Frey of The Eagles have filled our Facebook with remembrances, typically something like “Glenn Frey wrote the soundtrack of my childhood. ![]() I’ve been thinking about this for months, because my social media feeds are full of these words. Not thinking about death can help us cope, but let’s not imagine that we’re actually saying anything when we say these things. Sayings like “rest in peace” and “our thoughts and prayers are with the victims” are euphemisms: they enable us to go on without thinking about death.
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