“As soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die.”
German philosopher Martin Heidegger once notoriously said, sharing this same opinion with Søren Kirkegaard. The issue I have as an atheist is that as morbid as that sounds, it is more of an inconvenient, certain truth rather than an opinion. We are born into this world screaming, fragile and completely dependent on someone else to keep us alive. From the very second of our existence, when our skin is still at its softest and our bones at their weakest, there are endless ways in which we are at risk to die. It’s a condition we’re stuck in for the first couple of years in our life. Considering we survive it. Although we minimise some of those risks as we grow up, the inevitable limitations of our existence came crashing into my brain like a car accident the night I turned 20. After one too many cocktails, the clear certainty of death suddenly became a painful epiphany that I could not just shake off in front of my two friends, who were trying to make sense of what I was feeling. I was absolutely horrified.
I had had uncomfortable episodes of death anxiety many times before, but never in the company of someone else. Perhaps the alcohol unlocked some sort of portal to the inner workings of my mind, and now I couldn’t lock it because someone had thrown away the key. If thoughts would be visible, you would have been able to see a colourful stream of consciousness running out on both sides of my brain and escaping into the room, covering my entire body with a blanket of terror.
Usually this blanket of terror would replace my duvet at home. When I’m surrounded by nothing else but darkness, my fears suddenly scream louder. I can’t help but give them the attention that’s necessary to feed them, even though I know that this will never be my cure. Whenever the certainty of my mortality hits me, it feels like I’m falling into a deep, black hole I can’t get out of. Despite its infinity, it makes me feel claustrophobic, and all I want to do is to shake it off. But how can you shake off a reality that’s too obvious to ignore?
It was impossible to simply forget the reality of time, of ageing, the fact that I was one step closer to the ultimate end. “I might have already lived a quarter of my life! A quarter!” I looked at my friends in terror, and put a hand on my forehead as if to check if I had a fever or if my brain was boiling over with too many thoughts. “Yeah, but you don’t have to think about that now. We’re all going to die one day!” They would respond. But how can you not think about something that shoves its reality right into your face every single day? How can you find consolation in the fact that every single one of us is going to have to face this reality in the future?
When you think about your life in numbers just like I did, life suddenly seems incredibly limiting. When I made the assumption that I’ve already lived a quarter of my life, considering I will die of age while ignoring all the other possible ways in which I could die way earlier, I started thinking about my possibly last experiences in life. If I lived to the age of around 80, I might experience another 60 birthdays, but I might not make it to my 80th Christmas. Perhaps I will experience 60 more summers, but who knows whether I’ll make it to the winter? What if it’ll be the other way around, and I make it to my 79th winter, but I won’t ever feel the first signs of spring again? There is no certainty that I’ll even make it to those numbers. One day I will have felt the summer sun on my skin for the last time, seen the snow glitter and fairy lights light up the street for Christmas for the last time, or even just had a cup of hot coffee on a lazy Sunday morning for the very last time for the rest of eternity. And I won’t even know.
However, the reality is that mortality does not need numbers to be seen or defined, it’s always there. It stares you right in the face every time you walk past a cemetery or whenever you observe an old man’s shaking hands as he counts his cash in front of the cashier. Whenever you hear about a tragic accident on the news, or another case of some deadly disease. Death is all around us all the time, and every single breath we take brings us a little closer to it. If life would be a bank account, we’d be spending a little bit each day we’re alive, perhaps spending a little more whenever we do things that are likely to limit our time.
Perhaps there is a benefit to it all, as everything that’s limited seems a little more valuable. We savour that last piece of chocolate and pay attention to its taste way more than a bowl full of pick n mix. One last look at the view from the balcony of the apartment you’ve stayed at feels so much longer and intense right before you have to leave it. Mortality might limit us and only give us a certain number of times left to experience everything, but after all, would we be as driven and keen to take advantage of our consciousness if we would be immortal? Would we spend our time differently if we would have the rest of eternity available to us? Heidegger was once asked by a student how one can live a better and more fulfilling life, to which he simply responded: “Spend more time at graveyards”. Because facing the reality of death and the limitation of our experiences might be exactly what drives us forward, and what makes life so valuable.
Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash