Joyriding the Downward Spiral
Hello, my friend! I’m so glad you found me! After all, I wrote this specifically for you…
I’m just going to be straightforward about this with you. This wasn’t easy for me to realize so it probably won’t be easy for you to read. Please stick with me though… I’ve given this a lot of thought and even though the journey I’m about to take you on is a rough ride at first, it’s really done a lot for me personally. I hope it does the same for you!
I don’t think I’m alone when I say, “the older I get, the more anxious I become about the end of my life.“ Don’t get me wrong… it’s not something I obsess about constantly. I don’t think I’m an especially anxious person.
But I’d be lying if I said there weren’t occasions where a late night nightmare woke me up and then I couldn’t fall back asleep because I was thinking about the end of my life, the passage of time, “where did all the years go?”… that kind of thing. Maybe you’ve had a similar panicky sensation while contemplating the end of your existence?
Maybe you’re even feeling that end-of-life anxiety right now as you read this? Sorry about that. Take a few deep breaths and it will pass. Stick with me. Modern culture and especially modern Western culture does everything it can to make you ignore death, fear aging, and worship youth. To be fair, it does so for a reason… contemplating your own decline and death is incredibly hard!!! Again, stick with me. I think this rough ride will be worth it!
The Tiny Deaths
Maybe you don’t fear the actual moment of death or death itself. Perhaps your fears are more about the decline into death. You have fears of losing cognition, losing mobility, and the million other “tiny deaths” before death itself. I sure do!
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always struggled with change. The problem is, in this human life, the only constant is change. The secret to enlightenment is learning to love the change. Learning to love the constant churn of nature.
Because nature is nothing more than an endless churn. The tree grows. The tree falls. The tree rots. The rotting tree feeds the soil, allowing the next tree to grow.
For most of us, the rotting stage looks ugly. There’s fungus and mold and decay and whatnot. We don’t even wanna look at it.
But see, looking at it is the trick! Without that rotting stage, the cycle is incomplete. Beauty depends on ugliness. Growth depends on decay. We need to learn to see the beauty in the decay.
Beginning around middle age, aging becomes a process of losing abilities. You can’t run as fast as when you were younger, you can’t see as well as you used to, etc. You become a first-person eyewitness to the second law of thermodynamics.
Even though I wrote this specifically for you, I admit, I’m not sure how old you are. If you’re young, I hope you take full advantage of your youth. And please read this next section with foresight into your own life.
If you’re middle-aged or older, it’s important to remember that what you’re losing in abilities, you are gaining in wisdom. Wisdom is a special form of knowledge that can only be acquired over time. It’s knowledge fused with experience. Never underestimate the value of wisdom!
If you see each loss as a new opportunity to grow wisdom, you start to see the beauty in the decay. These losses of ability become like a warning track. You learn to value your remaining abilities. If you’re lucky, your lost abilities will inspire you to use your remaining abilities to their full potential before you lose them as well.
And if you do that, you begin to grow your legacy from your loss. Your connections to other people, your life’s work, all of the contributions you make to the world that will outlive you. Wisdom and legacy are the growth from your decay. When you begin to build a legacy, that is the point where your own personal rotting becomes fertilizer for humanity.
Aging is one of those rare processes where you can decay and grow simultaneously.
Looking at it this way helps, but is it enough? It’s still really scary to lose your abilities. For a lot of people, the tiny deaths are scarier than the final death. Whatever your own personal end-of-life fears are, let’s just call them all “death” to keep it simple.
Not on the Menu
I used to think eventually I’d hit a point in my life where I’d achieve some kind of acceptance of my mortality and with that, my end-of-life fears would evaporate. At this stage I don’t see that happening. Period. And so through study, reasoning, willpower, and self-compassion I’m now trying to force it. Trying to force an equanimity with mortality on myself.
Actually, that’s an understatement. I’m trying and succeeding! And I find that the deeper I delve into this mental exercise, the more effective it becomes at alleviating my fears…
You either make peace with your mortality or you don’t. If you don’t, it can lead to poor mental health, various addictions, or even manifest itself in poor physical health because of the mind-body connection. So your end-of-life fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You either must make peace with your mortality or suffer the consequences.
Because I’m sorry to report that immortality is simply not on the menu. In fact, immortality (AKA an infinite life) is not even truly conceivable for a mere human; who could never fully grasp the concept of infinity.
There Is Only One Coin
Thinking about our inability to fully understand infinity lead me to a realization… even though it may seem like belief and lack-of-belief in an afterlife are two diametrically-opposed positions, they’re really two sides of the same coin.
“Lifecycle” by anonymous. This collage is a derivative of “Dandelion Wish” by John Liu, used under CC BY 2.0 and “The Little Child Is Playing With His Old Grandfather” by Finestock, used under license from Pond5.
No matter what you believe happens after this life… you believe in eternity. If you believe in heaven/hell, reincarnation, reiteration, or pretty much any form of afterlife, then you believe in eternity AKA infinity. If you’re an atheist who believes nothing comes after this life, then you believe in the flip side of infinity (nothingness) AKA eternity. So although it seems counterintuitive, impermanence is really the only thing that gives our lives value. Everything that matters in our current lives here on Earth ONLY matters because it won’t always be here, including our current lives themselves.
Zero Is Not Normal
Again, the fact is the human mind is simply not capable of truly grasping eternity. For all of their brilliance, the ancient Greeks had no number for zero (the number zero was discovered by Arabian mathematicians). Because ancient Greek mathematics were rooted in geometry, they couldn’t mathematically conceive of zero. After all, what geometric object has a size of zero? Even so, although they were clearly not the first to imagine these ideas, the ancient Greeks were the first humans we know of to record the concepts of zero and infinity in philosophical writings.
So the ancient Greeks were fully aware of the concepts, but they had no practical use for them. On the other hand, our modern society uses the number zero so often we have thoroughly normalized zero. And we do so in ways that are often distractingly stressful… having zero money in your bank account will also keep you up at night!
Meanwhile, infinity is mostly used by theoretical mathematicians and physicists, so it retains its eternal power. I believe that as a result of our normalization of zero we have completely lost the concept of nothingness as a form of eternity. More importantly, our increasingly nihilistic society will never be able to truly accept mortality unless we reestablish nothingness as a form of eternity.
Just try to imagine eternity…. it kind of makes your head hurt, right? In a reality based on infinity or nothingness everything becomes meaningless because it’s either endlessly constant or nihilistically non-existent. Suddenly you may feel yourself desperately grasping for the refuge of impermanence. Good!
Flip Your Fear on Its Head
I realized I could flip everything on its head. I realized that the times when I am most aware of death are also the times when I am most aware of life.
The difference between the sensation of anxiety and the sensation of excitement is pretty minimal… in both cases your pulse quickens, your cortisol surges, your palms become sweaty, and so on. The physical sensations are pretty much identical; the main difference is your mind has spun one of these sensations negative and spun one positive.
No matter what you believe happens after death —be it afterlife, reincarnation, or nothing— you will never again get to have this exact experience you’re having right now. For all we know, after we cast off this mortal coil, we may never get to feel the roller coaster style thrill that we call “anxiety” ever again. So try to enjoy your downswings just as much as you enjoy your upswings! Take the anxiety of impermanence and transform it into the adventure of life!!
Death is a natural and inevitable part of life. Part of what makes it thrilling is nobody knows for sure what happens after we pass through it. We are all metaphysical explorers sailing toward the edges of the unknown. Although nothing can prepare you for what comes past the threshold of death, the knowledge of its existence can improve your experience of everything that comes before it.
“Thresholds” by anonymous. This collage is a derivative of “Crepuscular Rays” by Yoshikazu Takada, used under CC BY 2.0 and “Portal of Sorrow” by The Wandering Angel, used under CC BY 2.0.
Simply knowing someday all of this will end for you should make you grateful for all you have experienced, all you are experiencing, and everything to come; regardless of its so-called “goodness” or “badness”. You will feel the purest feeling of gratitude… The gratitude of being a being that is allowed to be, while simultaneously being aware that on some unknown day your state of being will cease.
So now, when I feel that panicky feeling, I spin it positive and channel the anxiety into excitement with the awareness that it’s not possible to be any more alive than I am in those moments when I contemplate my own death. This emotion, this moment, this passion… this singular life that can ONLY exist because it must end.
Revel in this newfound freedom! Now, I choose to treat these moments of end-of-life anxiety like a recreational drug and when it happens, I think to myself…. WHOOOOOO! What a RIDE!!! That’s some good stuff! Give me another potent hit of PURE LIFE!!!
“It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death – ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.”
~ James Baldwin
“When a human life reaches its prescribed lifespan, perhaps it dissolves into the universe. Perhaps death does not involve a transformation into nothingness and oblivion, but is merely a phenomenon of dissolution. Going from life to death is not an extinguishing, but a process of dissolving into something vaster.
If this is the case, then there is no longer any need to be afraid of death.
Both dying and living belong to the same dimension.”
~ Yayoi Kusama
