บท 41: The Beauty Of Death - How To Think About Your Mortality
Arguably, the primary source of all fear, sorrow, and existential conflict is the self-awareness and foresight of our mortality.
The fact that we can live a life that feels so real, so important. and so incredible, that we are compelled to want it to go on forever.
The fact that we can speculate and comprehend the possibility of the infinite yet be forced to live with the realization that we are finite, and everything we do and care about is subject to the short timeline of our life.
At some point, everything will evaporate away into nothingness.
As humans, this is our curse.
We are the seam between the infinite and the finite, able to ponder and long for the eternal, yet be bound to the impermanence of our deteriorating body.
But perhaps in some strange puzzling way, this is also our blessing.
Currently, we cannot control the biology of our human organism.
We cannot control the fact that we live inside of a decomposing carbon-based body destined for expiration.
But we can control, at least so some degree, the way we view and think about things from within it.
And so we can control how we think about the idea of our death and rationalize with it in a way that reduces some of its torment and allows us to make the best of our life before it arrives.
In order to do so, consider a video game, board game, or sports game that you have played in the past.
What was the driving force of playing said game?
Certainly you enjoyed playing the game for itself, but you were ultimately playing towards something.
You were playing the game towards an endpoint.
And arguably, you only played the game because you knew there would be an endpoint.
The human mind is seemingly fixed on requiring an endpoint to derive meaning and motivation for doing things.
What would a game be without an end?
Would we even play?
What would a story be without a conclusion?
Everything we construct and do in life, whether intentional or not, has an endpoint.
Death is life's endpoint.
It is our motivation to play the game of life and to create our narrative within it.
Without it, we would not care to leave legacies through our careers, passions, and families.
We would not want to positively impact the world around us.
We would not be inspired to create fascinating art, develop exciting technology, and incite innovative ways of thinking.
And we would not work to make the best out of life and find wonder in all its simple pleasures.
To live with the knowledge and angst of our impending mortality is undoubtedly the curse of humankind.
But it is paradoxically our blessing in disguise.
Perhaps our brains cannot discern meaningful existence without an endpoint, and because our experience of life is subjective and transient, we are able to find great value and meaningfulness within it.
Ironically, death is the reason why we cherish life so deeply.
And it is because we cherish life so deeply that we fear death with such great intensity.
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