Dear editor,
I’ve been surrounded by death recently. At least it feels like that. My mentor from college passed away from metastatic breast cancer a few months ago. She was in her thirties. Then it was a cherished family friend; in her sixties, also cancer. Most recently a co-worker’s heart gave out on the job. That was only two months ago. I have felt doom since then. It is affecting my sleep. What if I don’t wake up in the morning? Any moment my life could be torn away from me. Will I receive a cancer diagnosis? Brain aneurysm? Could my heart explode next time I am on the treadmill? What happens afterward? I’m afraid of dying.
Thanks,
Charlotte.
Dear Charlotte,
I find the present age a little too scientific about this issue. Regularly attend the doctor, have blood analyzed, wear a helmet on the bike and don’t think about mortality. That’s a long ways off. And it might be. But it might not be. In my own experience, grief is almost “not supposed to be” discussed past the funeral and, for pensive people, this prohibition may exacerbate the death anxiety. In order to live with the uncertainty of existence we must dispel the image of a hungry grim reaper hanging about our shadows with a gleaming sickle.
Freud saw death as a drive to “restore an earlier state”—the state of inorganic being. And Marx said that “death seems to be a harsh victory of the species over the particular individual and to contradict their unity.” Both are true in that rational Enlightenment sort of sensibility but they have all the comfort of a cold steel bed.
Religious beliefs aside, I’ll point out that the ancient philosophers tended to be more confrontational with this subject than those that came later. At the height of Christendom all attention was paid to the afterlife and in modernity all attention is paid to rigid inquiry. For this subject I turn to to the Epicureans who lived by the adage: “Death is nothing to us.” As atomic beings, once we lose our senses, we lose our ability to perceive, worry or fear anything. It is therefore irrational to worry about non-existence as there is nothing that can be feared in that state. What you are experiencing is neither an authentic fear of death nor a fear of loss. We do not lose our lives, we only cease to live them.
It seems to be the suddenness by which your loved ones and colleague stopped living that has aggravated your grief and catalyzed anxiety. There may be unfulfilled wishes that flummox you. Epicurus said: “He who is in least need of tomorrow will approach it with the greatest pleasure.”1 This is where I believe you should channel your conscious energy. What provides you enjoyment? Try to arrive happy every night to bed. There are likely social pressures and internal judgements that you are facing. Consciously and humbly work through them. Do you have unfulfilled goals and aspirations stoking this “need for tomorrow”? It is important that you locate these because they are the true sources of anxiety. The fear of dying is relieved once you temper the need for tomorrow and render it no more than a pleasant want.
In sols,
Your editor.
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Footnotes:
Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson, eds., The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia (Hackett Publishing, 1994), 103. ↩︎