YOUR QUESTION

11/02/2020 wondering about death

On Jeremiah Cymerman's podcast you say you don't fear death because we're all gonna die. Do you mean that? I'm not sure how I'd react if I found out everyone would live forever except me, but objectively that doesn't seem like it'd be a bad thing. Because of the way we perceive time--where the past seems relevant or knowable solely from how it affects the present--it seems like my death will render all my experiences meaningless, and the only way to escape dread is to care exclusively about the consequences of what I do in a moral or esthetic sense. And even then I dread the time when all those consequences are no longer felt by anybody and become meaningless. How do you think about this stuff fearlessly?

MY ANSWER

I think I had a clear understanding at a young age that eventually the sun would swallow the Earth and all of history as we know it (or will know it at that point) will evaporate. I’m not sure I’d call any of that meaningless. Your experiences having meaning in the moment they are happening. Death is a part of us; it’s a part of the whole structure. There’s really no reason to fear it. Pain, I fear, but that’s instinct. We came from the stars and we will return to the stars and who is to say that is an end? Even without the Earth or history or some tangible lineage, who’s to say what our consciousness becomes? I think in a lot of cases, fear is a waste of energy. You can’t stop death so there is no point in not embracing it. Meditate on it. It is within us.