Be thankful you're not dead

It's Thanksgiving Day in the United States. In the rest of the world, I gather, it's a regular day.

The real point of Thanksgiving seems to be to overeat, spend time with family members, and rest up for shopping tomorrow (big sales start in a few hours).

My wife has made a couple of pumpkin pies. I've got a vegan Tofurky cooking in the oven. There's thankfulness pouring out of every pore of our daily newspapers and Internet news sites.

I'm not big on holidays. I don't like following a societal script. Be thankful on Thanksgiving. Be worshipful on Christmas. Be patriotic on the Fourth of July.

Well, maybe I don't feel like it.

Today, though, it happens that I was planning to write about a subject that can be easily fitted into the thankfulness theme. To me, it's the ultimate -- and foundational -- "thank you." Because without it no other appreciation can be offered.

Be thankful you're not dead. Or, put more positively, Be thankful you're alive.

Any other sort of thanks fades into insignificance compared to this. I've harped on this theme in other blog posts. I'll almost certainly do so again. The reason:

Many times a day now, not continuously but frequently, I'm struck by a sensation that isn't a feeling, or a thought, or a perception, or an understanding, or any other categorizable content of my consciousness.

Rather, it's more an overarching knowing about what awaits my consciousness. And everybody else's.

Death.

Which, given my churchlessness, is a word that carries with it a big fat series of question marks, extending into infinity.

??????????????????????????????????... No comforting assurance of continued aliveness anywhere along the line.

I used to shun this honest assessment of what likely awaits me after my last breath and heartbeat. Namely, nothing.

Instead, I clung onto conceptions that told me, "Reincarnation is real. Or you might hit the karmic jackpot and do some soul-soaring after death, rising to a higher sphere where peachy-keen life will be yours forever."

Well, that'd be cool. But I'm not counting on it. And it's not what my existential gut is telling me -- the "this is it, dude, all there is" intuitive knowing.

For which I'm grateful.

Because if there's life after death, I'll take it. Gladly (more accurately, ecstatically). However, there's no way to know this will happen. And believing that it will dilutes the probably one-and-only life that each of us is living now.

Religious believers frequently say that life is meaningless if there is no God. Bullshit.

Actually, life is much more meaningful with no God, no belief in life after death, no expectation that heaven and hell are anything other than what is here and now.

This is hard to put into words.

What I experience in those knowing moments is a sense of wonder, of awe, of unimaginably deep appreciation for being alive -- because I realize that there won't be any more living for me to do, ever, than this lifetime.

Sometimes this makes me feel a sense of urgency to get going on important, significant, legacy-like things before death comes and they can't be done. Usually, though, I simply feel thankful that I'm able to do whatever I'm doing at the moment.

I just took the Tofurky out of the oven. I forgetfully tried to lift the glass cover off of the casserole with my bare fingers. Ouch!

The pain, however, was part of life. Ever so much existentially better than not existing at all.

And now I'm about to eat what appears to be a delicious vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner (though I didn't read the fine print on the Tofurky box and defrosted the dumplings before boiling them, so add another adjective, "misshapen," to "delicious" and "vegetarian").

There's a lot to be thankful for, no matter our life situation. The heartiest thanks should go to Life itself, however.

No need to posit a giver of life, such as God. No need to assume a continuation of life, such as reincarnation or salvation. No need to know our condition before we were born or after we are dead.

Now. Life. Living. Gratitude. That's it.

And it's plenty. In fact, perfect.

Comments

[Robert Paul Howard]

Dear Brian,

Your statement that "life...[is e]ver so much existentially better than not existing at all" is just an opinion, is it not?

Robert Paul Howard

[Rain]

You said it well for how I believe. That we exist at all is the mystery and it alone is enough if there should be no more. Live like there is more and at the same that there is not and life will be lived most fully. One thing for sure, the man you are today, that man only gets this one shot at it even if your soul goes on.

[Brian]

Robert, yes, the proposition that existing is better than non-existing is an opinion. But it is an almost universal one, so I presented it as a fact (or quasi-fact).

People do commit suicide. However, since suicide is so rare this shows that for almost everyone on Earth, life is preferable to death.

Extreme suffering and pain can, of course, make non-existence look better than existence. I recognize and respect that, along with my fellow Oregonians (we were the first state to have an assisted-dying law; now Washington does too).

Again, I was referring to a general rule: people value living more than not-living, existing more than not-existing.

[Brian]

Rain, nicely said. You point to a problem with reincarnation being the antidote to death. If I lived before, I don't know that now. So it's as if this is my first and only life. Living a previous life, if this is possible, doesn't change anything in regard to the mystery (and anxiety) of death.

[Fausta Barra]

I came across this since I've recently decided that at least for starters it's better to face the fear of death (for me more precisely, the fear of extinction--not that the possibility of pain or other indignities of dying don't worry me, but at least they'll pass!--and have been looking for some good discussions.

One thing I'm wondering about is the legacy question. What good is a legacy? If there's no afterlife what difference will it make to one if one is remembered?

[tucson]

Fausta inquires: "What good is a legacy? If there's no afterlife what difference will it make to one if one is remembered?"

--As far as the universe is concerned I don't think it matters at all what ones legacy is, good or bad. Is it going to matter after a million years let alone billions of years? There once was a very nice tyrannosuarus rex who decided not to eat hapless triceratops and to dine on ferns instead. But do we know of this creature's kindness? Has its legacy of gentleness been passed down through the eaons?

Your legacy only matters to you and how you want to live your life..with accomplishment, generosity and kindness or something else. It is for your satisfaction now, because in ten thousand years nobody is going to care or remember and your offspring and the tall buildings you left behind will be nothing but atoms morphing into other forms.

Does anyone think people in the year 140329 are going to remember Donald Trump and Trump Tower or that his great to the sixth power grandchildren will have any idea of him? His genes will be so diluted that they will bear no resemblance to him at all. They may look more like Othello.

[Blogger Brian]

Fausta, I pretty much agree with tucson's take on this "legacy" question. Whatever we do in this life should give us satisfaction and meaning now. We can't count on a hereafter to make the present moment right.

I've pondered the same question you are. It makes me feel good to think that this and that, stuff I've done and stuff I'll leave behind when I die, will have made the world a somewhat better place.

But you're right: likely I'm not going to be aware of anything after I'm dead, including the effects of the life I'm living now. So this makes me more determined to make a difference here and now, because there and then is a mirage.

Here's links to a couple of other posts that deal with death and non-existence, in case you haven't come across them yet:

http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2006/02/death_and_the_p.html

http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2006/02/more_thoughts_a.html