I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. I’ve been thinking too much.
Of course, I think all the time, but during the day I’m generally thinking about the movie I’m watching or the book I’m reading or the program I’m writing or the webpage I’m browsing or the lego thing I’m building or the fiction I’m writing or you know… something like that. It tends to keep my mind off of things I wouldn’t rather think about. However, at night, there’s nothing there but me and the darkness, and lately that’s inevitably what I end up thinking about; the darkness.
Specifically, the fact that I’m going to die some day. Of course I’ve known that for a while now, but it’s always been a kind of intellectual concept instead of any visceral feeling. Recently I’ve realized the full magnitude of what death really means: it means that I won’t exist at all. It won’t be that I’ll be really bored because there’s nothing to do, and it won’t be that I’ll have to “start over” — it’ll just be that I won’t be there at all. It’s such an impossible concept to think about that I can’t say I really understand what it means, but I do know that even trying to think around the issue leaves me with a bone-deep feeling of dread.
I’ve felt like that before in the past; when I’ve almost been in a car accident, when I have been in a car accident, when the doctors told me the tumor was malignant — but those times I always had a thing to do: grip the steering wheel and swerve out of the way, discuss treatment options with the doctors, all that jazz. With death, there’s no solution. I’m fucked. It’s going to happen, and it’s going to be terrible and there’s nothing I can do about it and it terrifies me. Jesus, I sound like some precocious teenager who’s just read La Chute.
I simply can’t help myself. Everything I do, I consciously recognize as the last time I’ll be able to do that thing at that time. I count years until my probable death, years until the halfway point, how much more time I can expect to have and how much I can honestly expect to do in that time. The problem is that, no matter what I do get done in that time, no matter whose lives I touch or what testaments to myself I might leave behind, it won’t matter because I won’t be there to know about it or experience it. I won’t be anywhere. And I want to be somewhere. I don’t know how anybody manages to exist with this shit hanging over them.
Sorry for that.
That’s why living for today is much more important than worrying about what will happen tomorrow.
How do I exist knowing that I’m not going to exist anymore? By knowing that my life won’t end with death on this planet, but that it will extend to somewhere else.
When I didn’t believe that life went on after this, that we just blew away with the wind when we took our last breath, I lost sight of any reason why I should go on trying to make a difference. If none of it ultimately mattered, why try so fucking hard?
I needed to believe in something more than just this life because I felt the same as you… that hollow ache of having absolutely no control over this life that you’ve been given. Of not knowing what’s going to happen to you.
I realized that more important than what happens after we die is doing something with the life we have. You or I could live until we’re 80 or we could both die tomorrow. I take comfort in knowing that I’ve lived every day with as much passion and love as I’ve been able to give.
It’s not worth it to be afraid of what’s going to happen to you after all this because honestly, none of us really know what’s going to happen. And I believe that with all of the pain and suffering we are put through in this life, there must be something better out there. There must be. There has to be a reason that all of this pain happens to us. There’s a sense of logic and reason to everything else that happens to us in life, even if we might not be smart enough to understand it. To me, it is only logical that there would be a reward for making it through all of these trials.
And if it’s worth anything… I’m glad you’ve been a part of my life. It’s been an honor to know you.
And the day I never speak to you again is a day I certainly do not ever look forward to.
<3
Thank you for your kind words.
I know all of this would go away if I were able to bing myself to believe in an afterlife, but I simply can’t. Everything I know about the history of human misconception tells me that the easy answer is usually wrong. The sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, the sun isn’t at the center of the universe, and I simply have to believe that any kind of self-awareness is just the result of a sufficiently complex biological system. The alternative just seems to be far too easy of an answer to the kind of angst I’m feeling now to be anything other than wishful thinking.
I’d be more than happy to be proven wrong though.
But is it really so easy to envision a life after this one? I can’t imagine what that could be like. How could someone/something create everything?
I think traditional religions dumb it down for the commonfolk. I think the reality of a life after this one is incredibly complex. Because after all, the laws of time and space would no longer apply, since they’re in essence, sciences created by man. Not to mention that because no one has ever seen the other side and come back to tell about it (and no, I don’t think tabloid reports count), no one really could know what it’s like.
But the answers have to come from inside you. No one could convince me there was a life after this one when I didn’t believe in one, and I’d fight vehemently against anyone who tried to convince me otherwise. I thought (and still do think, actually) the silliest argument a person could have is, “Well God works in mysterious ways… you have to just trust in him.”
What kind of shitty ass explanation for this life is that?
I imagine the most comforting thing you could do for yourself when you’re being swallowed by the darkness is to try to think of any other explanation for this life other than that there isn’t one. After all, it’s much more exhausting to overthink what the potentialities are than to accept that there is only one answer.
This is the most difficult part of life… understanding the reason for it. And I don’t think anyone ever really knows what the answers are. I think the most important thing to do is find the answer that works for you. The answer that lets you fall asleep at night.
About the only thing I can add to the comments above is that finding that answer takes time. I’m still coming to terms with mortality. I’ve chosen to believe in an afterlife and mystery. It’s still shitty that we all have to go through the dying part of living.
I guess I’m saying you are not alone in your fears.
This is the sort of thing that has kept me up at night or made me suddenly morose ever since I was 15. It makes me wish I had some religious or spiritual belief in an afterlife to soothe me, but eternal life is a different sort of nightmare, isn’t it?
Part of the reason I read Stiff was to see if it would help, and it did. A bit.
I don’t know how anybody manages to exist with this shit hanging over them, either, but somehow we do. I don’t know how we do it, but we just do . I’m glad we do, especially during those times when this shit isn’t weighing heavily on our minds.
Well, you can either go ahead and live life to the fullest while you’re still alive, or you can let this hang over you and live a sort of half-life where you might as well be dead anyways. It’s worth trying to fulfill your goals. You can’t really judge a movie until you’ve seen the whole thing, including the end. In the same way, life has to come to an end to actually tell a whole story. So your goal is to make your story a good one. Does it matter if there’s an epilogue?
I actually feel quite the opposite way. I don’t know about you, but for me, living is an awful lot of work. I experience a lot of good things the longer I live, but I’m piling up a great many regrets and bad memories too, and it’s not getting any easier to carry. Sometimes the effort of being conscious just hits me like a ton of bricks, and I can’t move a finger for days.
Honestly, I’m kind of looking forward to it, the way I’d look forward to a good long sleep after a busy day. I’m not particularly convinced by afterlife or reincarnation, but that’s just as well — oblivion seems like a much kinder fate. No more judgments, no more striving, no more consciousness. Just perfect nothing. It’s comforting, really; every Sisyphus gets to put down their boulder and walk away eventually.
These are some of the feelings that have been keeping me away from people lately. I just can’t seem to get a grip on anything. I’ve always been very positive about the idea of death, of it being part of what happens. Lately, I just can’t think that way, though, and I don’t know why. I know that my own self-loathing has a lot to do with it, and my perceived lack of utility to those around me, but I had that before, and I didn’t feel this way.
Bleh. It all makes me think of why choosing my own time of departure appeals to me. I don’t want to wonder about when.
I’m sorry people are giving you cheerleader-style advice. It’s not useful. I can only commiserate, which I suppose isn’t useful either, but hey, at least you’re not alone.
Thank you.
I think part of the problem for me is that I finally got over things like this; I have a good job, a nice place to live, I’m doing most of the things I want to do and I frankly more or less satisfied with life now. My damn brain just won’t let me be happy though and had to start thinking about the next bad thing to happen.
I know this doesn’t help, but I envy you your life on a regular basis — you have a lot of great things going for you.
Well, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy life, or that it’s not worth living. It’s just… whether you’re having a really good day or a really bad day, you’ll still want to get a good sleep at the end of it, right? It just doesn’t seem like all that fearsome a thing.
On the other hand, is anyone actually surprised that I reduce all interesting philosophical problems to analogies to food and/or sleep? No wonder it’s not so fearsome…