What if It Was Never the Death Itself?
What if we dread dying before we had ever lived?
“Mortals are immortals, immortals are mortals.. Living their death, dying their life.”
-- Heraclitus, 450 BCE
We dread death. So much so, we must deny that we do in order to function at all. Often, our very life depends on it — if we can’t sustain it, if we fail to repair the cracks in time, we literally develop a death wish.
Amazingly, we would rather die than face our fear of death… but why? Nothing about the death itself is that scary (if scary at all). Yet the existential dread is a fact of life. And so is the “human condition”, a combination of chronic anxiety, depression, PTSD, impostor syndrome, etc. — a long list, and every item on it screams fear… maybe that’s the key to answer?
Maybe it’s not about our last day. Maybe the real issue is with the way we choose to live our lives before then? Feeling powerless to change it, we can never make peace with it either… So we end up living in denial. Or, rather, almost in denial.
“Almost” because it is not about the past, it’s about the future. At the very least, we want to watch for a lucky break, and take that chance when/if it presents itself. That’s why there is a leak, a feeling that something is not quite right with the world.
… like that hole in your heart.
Like that empty feeling, which no new experience, no matter how novel and amazing can fill. You know you are missing out on something really important, maybe the most important part of your life…
Could that be, then, the real reason we are afraid of dying? Not death itself, but what it means for our hope to have the only experience that gives life its meaning.
We worry our life will be over before we start living it… So much so, we might neglect to care about ourselves … or about harming others.
It doesn’t have to be this way. But we can’t fix a problem until we face it. We need to stop leaving in denial first.
