I recently lost a loved one. And it wasn’t something I expected or that I was prepared for. It was out of the blue, out of nowhere, and took us all by surprise. Naturally, death has been on my mind of late. And in a few different ways: What’s after? What’s now? What matters?
I don’t have answers to any of these questions, but I did spend time thinking about them. Here’s what that led to.
What’s after?
I have this book idea of exploring what happens after death and pairing that with how it impacts how you live. I took a stab at coming up with the most obvious outcomes for the afterlife:
- Die and go to heaven (or hell)
- Die and go back to some energy/entity
- Die and be reincarnated
- Die and just be gone
- Die and come back as a spirit (or ghost!)
These are the top-of-mind results, but who knows what’s to come? What I do know is that how we live would probably be greatly impacted if we knew the answer to the afterlife. And it’s interesting (at least to me) to consider what living looks like in each scenario above. What choices would I make if there is a heaven? Or there is reincarnation? I imagine it would change drastically. Unfortunately, you don’t know till you know.
The optimist in me would love to believe there’s an afterlife. Being a ghost sounds intriguing. Being reincarnated is exciting, but also a bit depressing because who you were is essentially reset. The realist in me expects we’re just gone.
This thought is a bit scary. Just gone.
At least it was until I recently listened to an Alan Watts lecture explaining how one could think about death. In his lecture, he phrased it something like this: death is like going to sleep and never waking up.
This stuck with me for a few reasons. First of all, being gone sounds horrific, but when you pose it as just going to sleep, it’s a lot more palatable. After all, when we sleep, where are we? Sometimes we dream, but more often than not, we’re just unconscious. It also reminds me a bit of what it’s like going under for surgery – if you ever had the experience, one second you’re counting backward and the next you’re (hopefully) in recovery. Either way, that time just disappears.
In a weird way, it brought me some comfort to think that every night we are experiencing a taste of what death may bring.
What’s now?
The more prevalent question I explored is what’s now? How does this reminder of life and death change my behavior today? Because it should. It should remind all of us just how fleeting life can be. Just how ephemeral our best-laid plans are. There may be no tomorrow, so how do you spend today?
The biggest challenge of what’s now, especially when you face an unexpected death, is that despite the sudden reminder that life is short, you’re also stuck in the mud on how to move on. Life goes on pause as you face this new reality because of how unexpected it is. This seems to be an overlooked part of the grieving process. The reminder that not only someone you love is gone, but also that they are gone too soon. The suddenness makes the loss that much more difficult. Time heals all, but how little of it we seem to have.
In ancient Rome, it was common practice for individuals to be constantly reminded of their coming death, or as they called it memento mori. Whether after success or defeat, victory or failure, this message helped Romans grasp the significance of being alive and the fleeting nature of it all.
We all experience these moments, when we realize how short life can be, may be, could be. And they are eye-opening, to say the least.
My mind, for better or for worse, turns to my career. I’ve always questioned what I’m doing and where I’m going and while it hasn’t hindered me in any way, I think it also points to a simple truth: that I’m probably not doing the thing I should be doing. And it’s not for a lack of ideas. I have all the options in the world, which may be the problem. It reminds me of a poem by Sylvia Plath:
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
So it comes down to some simple questions. If you’re not happy with where you are, how do you change it? How do you go in a different direction, rather than spinning your wheels endlessly because time is a fickle mistress and it’s just diminishing? How do you stop procrastinating and consuming numbing media that is holding you to the status quo? And how do you choose?
If there’s one truth, it is that our time, or rather our attention, is our most precious resource.
To paraphrase an idea from Naval Ravikant, when you’re young you have time and health, but no money. When you’re middle-aged you have money and health, but no time. When you’re old you have time and money, but no health. I must begrudgingly admit, I’m in the middle-aged bucket now. I’m already lacking time, so how I spend it matters more than ever.
What matters?
And yet, career is probably not what I should be concerned with. What is really important? Career takes up far too much headspace, with ego and prestige and wants and needs. The reality is, my favorite moments are still those spent with my kids being adorable, but annoying rays of sunshine in my life. Or having dinner with my wife and getting to share our lives together. Or creating and building something for myself, not for the world at large.
I already have those things. And those are the things that the man I lost found most important too. Despite the rest, the parts we all tend to focus on, he appreciated the parts that we often overlooked – the parts of life that truly matter. Maybe that’s the lesson that is really to be had.
These moments have nothing to do with the larger world, my career, my goals, or my ambitions. They are the threads of life, the moments that truly make it worthwhile. Of course, life isn’t so simple. And yet there’s value to this way of thinking. A level of peace and calm and strength that comes when you have that foundation to pull from.
Ultimately, I’ve realized I need to create, to push myself, to grow, and evolve because time stops for no one. But I also need to release the pressure, and let go of the expectations and need for validation, because the things that truly matter, I’m lucky enough to already be blessed with.
I mean, when your 2-year-old daughter wholeheartedly proclaims, “I missed you papa. I love you too much.” How does your heart not melt?
What else could even matter?