While I understand that avoiding one’s potentialities is a way of ultimately avoiding death, there is something missing in that equation for me. It is the experience of movement toward being one’s individuality, one’s unique footprint, that becomes overwhelming. I’m not sure it is always about the ending of that life, but about the living of that life. Not always fear of living that life because it might end, but fear that the process of living that life will hurt to some degree.

As well, and possibly more deeply, it is the fear of not knowing what to do with it. What does the person do with reaching her potential? What now? What next? Can I continue to live creatively in this world, each day that I confront existence? Is this only a fear of death? Is this only a hurry up and live before death? I dont’ think so. Is that a part? Yes. But I wonder if sometimes that is the cop out. Blame it on death. What about life? What about right now. It is full engagment right now that is hard. Blaming it on death feels like an intellectual escape from the immediate being-in-the-world that presents itself.

How will I keep confronting my living Self seems the hardest question. Not how will I live well before I die. I find those similar but different enough that the one sided coin of much existential writing is too focused on the stimulus of death and not enough of the fullness that life offers — a fullness that can overwhelm, but when confronted authentically, felt deeply and “right.” In some ways, the Denial of Death follows from a Modern Christian paradigm that says what is most important comes after This. The secular version was still focused on this but just stopped at death, denying the afterlife. That wasn’t enough. I think where existential writing has gone, and is going, is to the present living of life. That was always the goal, I understand this, but I’m not sure for the same kinds of reasons. I also think there is some kind of confrontation with Truth that happens in the confrontation with potentialities: this brings a sense of fulfillment and peace. It is not just white knuckling it through existence, bearing the weight of meaninglessness. It is being open to the Truth spoken in that darkness, a voice that softens and transforms the soul into a beautiful one that then has a purposeful purpose.

I realize there is so much more to say about this. I realize that I’m only briefly touching on a mountain of thinking. But it was a thought I have had numerous times in my reaction to what felt like a one sided focus of existentialism and that it need not be all that existentialism can address. I am hugely indebted to the basic stripping of existence that many authors address. I love it. I live for essence of existence.