How the Fear of Death Prevents Us to Live
Why the magic of life takes place outside of our comfort zone
Before scuba diving, I used to think I did not fear death. At the time, I loved life (I still do), but I was also convinced I would not mind very much if I was to die the next day. This attitude allowed me to go skydiving, climb steep mountains, and jump off buildings. Compared to those adventures, scuba diving ranked only moderate on my ‘danger detector.’ It had been a lifelong dream, and I was excited to finally explore the underwater world. Yet, when embarking on this new adventure, the feeling of suffocation was so real I could not get past it. After many attempts to overcome my fear, I finally had to accept that maybe it was not meant to be. My dream to weightlessly float through the deep waters died that day. Out of that lost dream, however, a curiosity was born to deeply understand the close relationship between fear and death, which we encounter in daily expressions such as being scared to death and dying from fear.
Oxford Dictionary describes death as: “the destruction or permanent end of something or someone.” This definition immediately points out most of the reasons why death can be frightening:
- Death is the end of something, indicating that no matter what happens next, things will be different. Change, therefore, is imminent.
- Death is permanent, meaning we cannot go back to how it was before.
- Death has a destructive connotation, an implication of suffering.
It is in these elements combined that fear of death is rooted: fear of change, combining fear of the unknown and fear of suffering. In my case, my fear was also related to the primal sense of not being able to get what you need the most at that moment: air.
The first time I had a panic attack, we were about 4 to 5 meters deep at the bottom of the sea. My fear had been triggered by a deep-rooted, but up to that moment of my life, unknown fear of suffocation. The scuba instructor had just asked me to take off my mask. It went against every single one of my instincts, but I was taught that my instincts, during this moment, would be wrong. So, I complied with the instruction. The mouthpiece of the air supply firmly secured in my mouth, I rationalized that nothing could go wrong. It was a simple scuba training exercise, one that all my fellow scuba trainees seemed to have no problem with at all. Still, as my hands went up to my mask, they hesitated. My breathing increased (something that should be avoided during scuba diving, as it increases air consumption). My heart rate sped up. I am sure I would have been sweating if I had not already been submerged in the ocean.
Instructions about this exercise had been given on land. At the time, they had seemed clear, simple, and straightforward. Just another box to check off the list required to get my scuba license. Take off the scuba mask for 5 seconds, continue breathing, put it back on, and clear out the water. Scuba diving 101, preparing you in case your mask gets loose during a dive. Once I was submerged in the water, however, the simplicity of the task at hand eluded me completely.
Eventually, I managed to calm myself down enough to do it, despite the lingering anxiety. “You can do this!” I thought. “No need for panic,” my mind tried to reassure me and calm down my emotions. “Just take this mask off, count to 5, and put it back on. You’ve held your breath for longer than that many times before. Nothing will happen.” So, I did. I took off the mask… and suddenly, my body was cut off from the air. The panic returned. What was happening? I sucked and sucked on the mouthpiece, trying to force air into my lungs, but to no avail. Where before I had been anxious, now I was experiencing a full-blown panic attack. I vaguely could see the instructor holding up his fingers. 1… 2… I placed the mask back and cleared it, not making it to the required five counts for passing this test, but I did not care: as soon as the water left my nose, my body resumed its normal functioning, and my airways opened up. I could breathe again.
From an evolutionary perspective, fear serves the purpose of keeping me alive. Fear is my body’s way of responding to a threat. If the threat is real, fear will save my life. Fear will spur me into action during a wildfire or an earthquake. However, if the threat is perceived rather than real, fear will make me miss out on opportunities and experiences. Here, it will not protect me from dying, but rather it will prevent me from living. As Mark Twain wisely said: “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” This is what happened when I first went scuba diving, too. I missed out on a beautiful experience. My dream died before it was able to come to fruition, mercilessly killed by my uncontrollable fear of suffocation.
Death means a permanent change. It is a change that often is associated with suffering, at least temporarily. We suffer from the loss of the loved one, and we suffer from seeing our loved ones suffer. We are not equipped anymore to deal with agony. As soon as we experience physical pain, we have painkillers readily available. For emotional anguish, we swallow antidepressants as if they were sweets. With the luxury of taking away our physical or emotional distress by simply swallowing a pill, we have unlearned the tools to handle any form of pain. We have become afraid of pain, as we have become afraid of anything that we do not know how to deal with. Knowing that death and suffering are inevitable, they become an omnipresent shadow, a dark cloud hanging over our lives. They become something that we want to avoid at all costs. How, you ask? By avoiding change. By not taking any risks. By letting our fears cage us into the prisons of our minds. And yet, in nature, most often, things that do not change do not grow. And things that stop growing are dead. So, by fearing death, we remain the same, we stop growing as a person, and, in a way, we die.
Change is unpredictable. Change means saying goodbye. To things, to places, to people we love. Sometimes it means letting go of people whom we have outgrown, people that no longer fit with who we are and what we stand for, who are nonetheless people whom we feel safe with. Just as often, change means saying goodbye to loved ones, despite how much we care for them. These changes are some of the most difficult ones to make because we are leaving behind something good for something different. Something that might or might not be better. Something unknown. As a result, we are not good at saying goodbye, not to places, not to objects, not to loved ones, and not to ourselves. When it is time to move forward, we stay frozen in place.
Change is dynamic and moving, and as such, it can sometimes feel out of our control. As a result, we cling to the lives we know, trying to manage, command, dominate, or resist when really, we should be letting go. We pile our identities with the versions of our old selves the same way a pathological hoarder clutters his house with useless objects. We carry with us the weight of all the previous characters we have been over the years. We collect the parts of ourselves that no longer fit us but we are not yet ready to say goodbye to. Like the outgrown old clothes that take up too much space in our closets, our past personalities suffocate our future selves whom we have yet to meet. Because if these old selves are not our identity, then who are we underneath?
Change is unknown possibilities. The stability of the known provides safety: at least we know what to expect. The promise of things not getting worse often can be enough for us to sacrifice the possibility of things getting better. No change means stability, and safety. Things that do not change are predictable and well-known. Yet it is in the unknown possibilities, when we leave our comfort zone, that our true potential lies. It is through change that we get challenged to develop, to evolve, to grow. It is through change that we discover our likes and dislikes, our desires and aversions, our passions and indifferences. Change is how we get to know ourselves. And as such, it is our fear of change that holds us back. Under the shadow of this fear, dreams wither away until one day, they have disappeared. With the death of the dream comes the same process of grieving as with the loss of a loved one (though the intensity might differ). We mourn not only the dream itself but the simple fact that we had a dream, any dream, to begin with. Now, suddenly, we do not. We lament what could have been. We cry for the person we could have become if the dream had come true. As time passes, the pain fades until, eventually, there will be room for a new dream, and life continues. As is the case when someone dies, only memories remain. We will think back with fondness of the would-haves, could-haves, and should-haves. And hopefully, we will be lucky enough to create new dreams and follow new passions that will allow us to grow in life.
This was true for me, too, when my scuba adventure ended. After an intensive week of trying to conquer my fear of suffocation, I failed the scuba open water course and decided that maybe scuba diving was simply not for me. I buried my dreams of colorful fishes and vibrant corals and moved on with my life. I walked away and never looked back. Until I met my partner, who happened to be a scuba diver, it took me a while still to give scuba diving another chance. My memory of the fear I had experienced was a potent guard on my self-imposed prison. It was not until my partner explained to me what had happened to me during that training that it had not just been my fear but also a physical, a physiological, reflex of my body that I started contemplating scuba diving again. You see if I had simply been breathing out through my nose when taking off my mask, filling my nose with air instead of water, my body would not have closed off my airways. I would have been able to breathe underneath the water, even without the mask. I most likely would still have experienced the anxiety, but I would have been able to move past it. The acute fear caused by a perceived life-threatening situation would not have transformed into a long-lasting fear of scuba diving itself. My dreams of exploring the oceans would not have died but instead would have flourished.
Through the years, scuba has become an important part of my life. It has become a part of my identity that I actively cherish, a path in life where I feel I can explore both the world and myself. It is when I feel the most alive. It is not the scuba itself that makes me feel this way. It is the sense of facing my fears, of surpassing my limitations, of growth that creates this vibrant energy that surges through my body whenever I descent into the water. With this energy comes a sense of being present, of experiencing life right now. As Eckhart Tolle says: “The more you live in the present moment, the more the fear of death disappears.” My fear of death, all those years ago, prevented me from living. Yet it also contained the seed for the lessons I learned along the way. Out of the death of my dream, I learned what it meant to be alive.
