I’m Not Frightened Of Dying
“I’m not frightened of dying,
Any time will do, I don’t mind
Why should I be frightened of dying?
There’s no reason for it, you’ve gotta go sometime”
— The Great Gig In The Sky, Pink Floyd
I too was not afraid of death, when I was younger. Back when the dazzle of possibilities at the beginning of life blinded me to death’s ominous presence on the distant horizon.
“The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath, one day closer to death”
— Time, Pink Floyd
Now, in mid-life, my life has assumed its basic shape and form. Death is no longer obscured. Its reality is clearer, closer. Not that it is imminent. But I should come to terms with it before I finally face it. And nip at the bud any existential angst.
How?
Immortality
Let’s start with the counterfactual case of immortality: what if I could live forever?
At first thought, I might be relieved. But then I realize that forever is a very long time. How could I find sustained meaning in an unlimited life? How could I handle any periods of extended misery without the assurance of a final escape? Never mind all the practical and corporeal challenges of infinite life. Immortality is clearly a more dreadful alternative to death.
So I draw solace from the fact that my time is limited. And knowing that, I can plan and experience my life at the time scale of a human lifespan and temper expectations accordingly. Like a movie, good or bad or a bit of both, that is experienced for a while and then comes to an end.
Birth vs Death ¹
Fine, I accept death. Why then should I care any more about it than my birth? After all, the world existed before I was born, and I don’t seem to mourn that fact. Why should I be indifferent to the prenatal period, and grieve the prospect of a postmortal one?
One of the impediments to a temporally symmetric attitude is a natural inclination to be biased towards the future, more so in some than in others. For example, would you rather have experienced four hours of pain yesterday or would you instead choose one hour of pain tomorrow? I for one am extremely future-biased and immediately opt for the longer-duration pain in the past. You may be different. But I would hazard a guess that no one is completely temporally neutral. Nevertheless, I find that the blow of eventual death is softened by the realization that the postmortal world will continue to exist without me in it, much like the prenatal world before my birth.
There is, of course, a crucial difference between the prenatal and the postmortal world. In the former, I never existed. So I never affected it. In the latter, I leave a mark. My loved ones lose me. And I am lost to the world. Is that not cause for bereavement? Indeed, to an extent, but there’s a silver lining.
Who Am I? ²
“I had never understood before the invisibility of a human. How what we take to be a person is in fact a spirit we can never see. Not until I sat in that room, with the dead vehicle that had carried my brother through his life, and for which I had always mistaken him.”
— Imagine Me Gone, Adam Haslett
The silver lining in my loved ones losing me and me being lost to the world lies in who (or what) exactly “I” am. I’m not my body or any part thereof. I am an abstract self-referential symbol in my brain. As I do things, and things happen to me, I keep updating what the “I” symbol in my brain represents. But why should this abstract symbol that is my self exist only in my brain? Don’t I also exist as lower fidelity copies in the brains of those who know me? Each of my loved ones, friends, and acquaintances has a symbol of me in their heads, with varying degrees of detail and accuracy. In a limited way, each one of them can imagine, feel, even act, on my behalf. Much like I invoke my wife’s self in my head when I get excited as her to spot a bird she would like.
So, my grief at my prospective death is ameliorated by the knowledge that I will continue existing within those who remember me. And what better way to spend the rest of my life than to nurture relationships. And have shards of me remain for many lifetimes, across many lives, after my body dies.
Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream,
It is not dying, it is not dying
— Tomorrow Never Knows, The Beatles
References
- Midlife — Kieran Setiya
- I Am A Strange Loop — Douglas Hofstadter
