(32) What I learned about the fear of death
January 9, 2011
I have touched on the topic of death in a number of previous blogs. But today’s topic is more about living than dying and I was moved to write it by a dear friend’s sad news over the last weekend.
The death of someone close to us affects us all profoundly. Often we need to make sense of it and people can find themselves able to generate great sums of money or raise mass awareness of a cause, prompted by a sad death. Many of us also decide to be better people, or tell our families we love them more often or throw caution to the wind and do something we have always wanted to do when reminded how short life can be.
But that’s the death of someone else. How do you actually feel about your own death?
Think about it – all you know here and now will end one day and (according to what you believe) will never be like this again. Your time will be up and you are no longer part of this world. In the past I have suddenly had these moments of clarity, that I will die, at my favourite time slot of the day: 3am, wide awake and alone in the world. The truth would pin me to the bed and I have been consumed by the reality of that fact. Strangely enough it has also happened to me whilst in the cinema and watching n all consuming film. I suddenly get the ‘voice’: “it all ends you know”. And I am terror-struck alone in a huge room full of people.
Well to be accurate, I haven’t had a fear of death experience for some years and, although I mentioned my ‘acceptance’ of the death in blog No 6, I also discovered something else was able to abate the fear. I noticed that I would have the 3am wake-up call in times of my life when I have been coasting along. Perhaps guilty of not pushing through with things I wanted to do or neglecting my core values. Also running on somebody else’s agenda or having to do work that was boring or unpleasant would cause my mind to try and shock me into action by reminding me that time was ticking on.
I therefore began to test myself at times when I was fully engaged in a project or happily planning a new scheme. I would test my feeling on the thought of my own death and find that I was much less troubled. And, sad as the event may be, death was a part of life and inevitable. It the occurred to me that if I was happy and fulfilled I could accept the event of my own death. But if I was anxious or frustrated the fear of death would be stronger because I was ‘off track’’ with my life in some way. It would be as if I still had more to do and that death would rob me from achieving it all.
I still test myself now and then and think “If I were to know I was going to die in the next few months, how would I feel?”. If I feel fear, I know I have to reassess what I’m currently doing with my life. If I feel that it would be OK to die (though perhaps a trifle sad) I know I am following my right path in life and doing exactly what I should be.
We all have to go and we all will. But it’s how you spend your life before you go that perhaps determines your readiness…
January 12, 2011 at 7:24 pm
‘man’ in this case is gender neutral…
And ‘detachment’ here is letting go of the self – one’s ego and self-absorption…
“Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he is incapable of abandoning himself to anything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he can’t deny himself anything. A man of that sort, however, does not crave, for he has acquired a silent lust for life and for all things of life. He knows his death is stalking him and won’t give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything.
A detached man, who knows he has no possibility of fencing off his death, has only one thing to back himself with: the power of his decisions. He has to be, so to speak, the master of his choices. He must fully understand that his choice is his responsibility and once he makes it there is no longer time for regrets or recriminations. His decisions are final, simply because his death does not permit him time to cling to anything.”