Recently, I’ve been thinking about a line from the book Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom which reads; ‘Everybody knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it’. Once I read it, death sprung up at the forefront of my mind, surprising me like a memory of an experience, I forgot I had lived. When it comes to death, there’s the knowledge of the word and there’s a belief in its reality. If you think about it, when have you really ever asked yourself if you believe you’re going to die? You know the objective truth; human death is inevitable. Yet, the subjective truth; your belief in the notion that YOU could die at any time, seems distance. And why is this our experience? Why is my belief in the idea that I’ll live forever stronger than my belief in the idea that I could die?
My closest experience with death came to me two years ago. It’s the unexpected deaths, not the ones that grace with time, that really make you THINK about it. When you lose someone you believed was permanent in your life, you feel the impact of impermanence. One day you can feel their permanence; in their identity, their voice, their hands and legs, the next minute there’s a silence of non-existence. It’s the irony that puzzles you; because the only thing permanent about our existence is the truth that we will die, yet we live with the fear that everything about us – our actions, mistakes, fears, thoughts are permanent.
And it’s in this irony that I was able to find my answers. We aren’t really living if death is an idea to us. This belief in the ‘idea’ allows us to be complacent – because we have time to ideate. We can build identities in our head, change patterns of behaviours in our dreams, challenge our ideas in the future and act upon our thoughts later. It’s this ‘idea’ of death that truly kills us every day, not literally, but because it grants us permission to create ideas of permanence. What I mean is, if you are impermanent, you will cease to exist one day, then even your thoughts and ideas are temporary. They’re as impermanent as you. And if you accept your impermanence, if you kill this ‘idea’ of death, you’re left with the reality of it. If you really believe you’re going to die, the only thing permanent you can create is action. You will do things, act on your ideas, think whatever you want, say what you wish and live without the delusion that you have time. A better approach to life, as Morrie says in the book, is, ‘to know you’re going to die and to be prepared for it any time’. This doesn’t mean that we sit in suffering at the knowledge that we won’t exist someday. You prepare for death by accepting it – if your whole life isn’t permanent, then why do we hold our troubles, worries, fears and stresses as fossils in our life? Why do we limit our thoughts and ideas to our head when doing something about them will actually create an immortal reality? We give so much of our time to things that distract us from death, like negative thoughts, worry, self-doubt, opinions that are someone else’s – that we forget about it.
I beg that you don’t summarise this essay with a phrase I despise; ‘live your best life because you could die tomorrow’. The reality is, most often, we wake up the next day after blurting such a statement out. Yet, as we’ve seen in our lives, death can stop anyone’s time on this Earth. So think about it, not in fear that it will come, because of course it will, but in preparation for the impermanence it will bring. You can only be prepared for it by acting on the impermanent things in your life – by dying every day to the things you know. You were angry today, jealous today, unsuccessful today, correct today, happy today, running today, writing today, singing today – let that die today. Tomorrow you’re alive again and death is no longer an idea.
The author can be contacted on Instagram @sincerelysanah
Sanah Thakur
