I used to have a strong fear of death. So much so, as I described in a 2004 HinesSight post ("Give me liberty or give me gerbil"), I made an attorney say gerbil rather than death whenever she needed to refer to my eventual demise.
Kathleen Evans, the attorney, did a masterful job at a whiteboard injecting into our legal-impaired brains the gist (but not the details, blessedly) of why what we did in 1993 still made sense in 2004, even with arcane changes in some estate and tax laws whose sole purpose seemed to be to make things so complicated that you had to hire a lawyer to explain them to you. Isn’t that the reason behind most laws?
When we first sat down in Kathleen’s office, I reminisced that in 1993 we did our talking at a table by her Court Street window. That was where I made Kathleen substitute the word “gerbil” for “death” when she was referring to my eventual, um, gerbiling. It just was too uncomfortable for me back then to hear, “So, after Brian’s death, Laurel will need to….”
I’m not sure if “So, after Brian’s gerbil” was much better, but it added a certain levity to what otherwise was a not-so-pleasant discussion. Laurel has no trouble talking about her own death. I admire her. Death scares me shitless, though the older I get, I suppose enough shit has been scared out of me already to make what remains less noticeable.
Early on yesterday I noticed that Kathleen wasn’t saying “death” when she spoke to me. She wasn’t saying “gerbil” either, but was substituting the usual sorts of euphemisms: “gone,” “no longer with us,” and such. I told her, “It’s OK to say ‘Brian’s death’ now. I’ve gotten past the whole gerbil thing.”
It's interesting that I was so afraid of death in 1993, as that was when I still believed in the teachings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious organization led by a guru considered to be God in Human Form who supposedly would guide his disciples after their death -- either to heavenly realms beyond the physical, or, if your karmas were in bad shape, into a new human form through reincarnation.
Yet it was during my true-believing days that my fear of death was greatest. By 2004, when I wrote the gerbil post, I had started to distance myself from the RSSB teachings, which coincided with an increased willingness to speak directly about my eventual death.
Now I'm even more accepting of death. Sure, that may be partly due to my age, 76, since the older I get, the more I feel like I've enjoyed a decently long life. Plus, with age comes increasing aches and pains, along with other health problems, so it becomes easier to visualize a time when life becomes so difficult, death will seem like a relief.
However, it seems to me that the main reason why death doesn't seem so scary is that I no longer feel like I'm a special spiritual person, a disciple of a Perfect Living Master whose destiny is to be united with the highest manifestation of God, far above the limited godliness that members of ordinary religions like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam will attain.
Instead, now I have rejoined the ranks of ordinary human beings. And that feels extraordinary.
Occasionally a sense of "one day I'll die and be nonexistent forever!" will wash over me. I'll be in awe of the amazing preciousness of whatever I'm doing when that realization strikes my mind like a bolt of reality lightning. This usually-taken-for-granted activity -- doing Tai Chi, washing the dishes, walking the dog, whatever -- suddenly seems infinitely valuable, since after I die, there won't be any moments of living at all.
But here's the thing: if I reflect upon that sense of leaving life behind forever, I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing than whatever I'm doing right now. I'm not big on "bucket lists," those activities people come up with that they're determined to engage in before they kick the bucket. (Meaning, die.)
I don't feel that taking a trip to Europe would make death more acceptable than staying at home. I don't feel that writing another book would make death more acceptable than composing a blog post every night. I don't feel that meditating twice as long in the morning would make death more acceptable than how I currently meditate. I don't feel that contemplating nature would make death more acceptable than watching a football game.
Since I'm back to looking upon myself as an ordinary human being, which is how I saw myself before I joined RSSB, I'm comfortable with the fact that death comes to everybody. I had no control over being born. I have no control over being dead. Both are inescapable aspects of life.
This is a big relief for me. When I was religiously-minded, I'd feel like I had to make every moment count, since I'd been taught that this physical plane of existence wasn't my real home, that my destiny lay elsewhere.
Now, I don't see myself as a spiritual being experiencing physical existence, but simply as a physical being experiencing physical existence -- along with everybody else in the world. One day my experiencing will end, as will that of everybody else. And that's just the way things are. Which is fine by me.
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