Let’s Talk About Death
I wonder how many people read that title and decided to skip the rest of this post. For most of us, denying death takes up an awful lot of life. We put our time and energy into daily worries, momentary squabbles and short term plans, as if they’re the most important things in the world. And all the while, the sand keeps trickling to the bottom of the hourglass in a steady, unrelenting stream.
I recently came across something called a “death meditation”. I know, that sounds about as inviting as a root canal, but the point of it isn’t to lose yourself in morbid contemplation of the pointlessness of life. Actually, it’s the opposite. The idea is to free ourselves from all the machinations we go through to deny death, and to look at it clearly and unflinchingly, in a way that reminds us how precious our time here really is.
The meditation starts by acknowledging, and really feeling, the inevitability of our death--not as something to be feared or grieved, but as a simple, inescapable fact. When we do this, we realize that somehow that fact has escaped us. By failing to pick it up and examine it, we’ve let our mortality be replaced by a vague, unspoken sense that we might just live forever. It’s crazy how unfamiliar it seems when we look at our mortality with clear eyes.
The second step is to recognize that the time of our death is entirely unknowable. We live with the comfortable assumption that it’s decades in the future, but for all we know, it may be today--and for hundreds of thousands of people, it will be.
The third part of the meditation is to realize that so many of the things that preoccupy us will be rendered meaningless by our deaths. That fight you’re having with your sister, that raise you think you deserve, that long line at the coffee shop, that bathroom you’re remodeling--none of it will matter at the moment of your death. The meaning of our lives is not contained in the things we arrange and plan and acquire and achieve. The meaning of our lives is in how we move through the world from one moment to the next.
When I was a teenager, I kept a daily journal and filled it with grandiose, self-absorbed ramblings and ruminations that, for most of my adult life, would have made me cringe to read. I remember one period where I was sure I’d discovered the meaning of life. I wrote page after page of earnest manifestos declaring that the only point of human existence was to pursue two goals: Wisdom and Love. I’m pretty sure I capitalized it then, too. And underlined it. Twice.
But look at me now. I’m an old man, humbled by experience, with so much less faith in my insights than I had then, and I’m writing a blog post that essentially says the same thing. Wisdom and Love. After I strip away the momentary machinations that usually fill my head, they’re all that really matter. What do I want to do with the time I have left? I want to learn more about this life I’ve been given, and I want to find some way to give and receive love. That’s it. The rest is just a complicated, ineffectual tap dance to try and keep death at bay.
We should talk about death more. We should listen to Jason Isbell’s song If We Were Vampires. We should stride into every day with curiosity, generosity and gratitude, as if these next few precious hours were our last.
Of course, we won’t--but we can try.
