Mortality

‘I told you I was ill’ are the infamous words that comedian Spike Milligan has engraved on his headstone. I love how curmudgeonly and playfully disdainful this is in the face of death. Mark Twain had a wonderfully practical take on death when he said “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

For many of us though, coming to terms with our own mortality is often too much and we ease this anxiety in infinite ways. Carl Jung said that until we learn to make our subconscious conscious it will direct our lives and we will call it fate. 

Fear of death or death anxiety can be stifling and overwhelming. I came up against it in my late teens as I was hit with a crashing deeply felt understanding that everything and everyone around me wasn’t going to be available to me to experience and engage with forever. It was limited, I was limited, my time is finite. 

George Herbert wrote that “living well is the best revenge” - the trick is finding out what our version of living well looks like. Existential angst hides amongst death anxiety. The fear and guilt associated with a life half lived; knowing somewhere somehow that we are not doing all that we want, are capable of or interested in. What is our calling, where is the meaning for us? What can we do that makes this moment we have on earth seem worth while in the face of the helplessness that can often arise from contemplating our own mortality? 

We are all locked in a battle with the heart and the head. The head is always shouting to us to stay safe, stick with the familiar, don’t lose your identity or let it be challenged, what we know is immovable as it offers us security and stability, the unknown is dangerous and scary, we know what to expect here… The heart on the other hand just sits there quietly whispering to us with a reserved dignity all the things we already know somehow that we should be doing. Saying sorry, becoming humble, shedding ego, being brave enough to be vulnerable and accept our short comings, making amends, letting go of anger, loving ourselves more, taking our chances on new experiences and calling them adventures instead of risks... 

Tuning in to this quiet voice is in my experience central to easing death anxiety. Some people call it making peace with God but for me whenever I hear the word God I always think it can easily be substituted for the word ‘conscience’. Ultimately, we all want to be at peace with ourselves in the face of our mortality. When the grave finally yawns our name, we can go to it with a clear conscience knowing we lived our life with the fullest awareness, greatest authenticity, and integrity as possible.