Talking to people about death is an important part of my work. Particularly when working with retirees who are closer to the end of life than they are to its beginning. Often, I get the impression that this is the first that they’ve really talked about it in-depth with someone, and it’s no wonder. Our whole society is skittish about death, and we have attempted to hide any evidence of its existence.
Much of the news and education for retirees revolves around health and wellness. This is important, and many retirees report it as the topic they are most interested in. Yet, this emphasis on longevity merely masks the final truth. We are all going to die someday. Some sooner, some later.
This is just as true for the most biologically optimized health nut as it is for the most infirm hospice patient. But we don’t like to think about that. And we also don’t like to talk about it, because it doesn’t lend itself to the overwhelming narrative of our culture. This narrative says that it is better to have more things, spend more money, take more trips, and pack as many possessions and activities into your life as humanly possible.
Getting ready for death, however, requires letting go. It demands our recognition that consumerism is not a path to peace, that our lives are defined less by what we did and more by who we became.
Occasionally I’ll meet with someone who declares that they don’t to leave any money behind, that they ideally want to run out of money on the day they die. On one hand, I’m happy that they realize their money isn’t worth anything in the hereafter, that they have to leave it behind.
On the other hand, though, this approach is symptomatic of the same problem I’ve been discussing. Even in our attempts to wrestle with death, the best solution that most people can come up with is just to enjoy life as much as possible before they die. Specifically, spending as much as possible to leave as little left over as possible. This is an external, consumeristic solution to an internal, spiritual problem. And, again, it’s no wonder. Consumerism is the prevailing value-system of America today.
Now, I’m a fan of any spiritual program that helps you make sense of this complex world, and navigate life with some sense of peace. The problem is that consumerism is a very narrow solution to a broad range of problems. It ignores subtlety, and promises a one-size-fits-all solution to an inherently personal problem.
It’s most basic assumption is that spending more money means that you’ll have a good life. That’s a convenient fiction to push if you want people to buy more cars, bigger houses, and a million unnecessary trinkets. But it just isn’t true. We are not economic machines, optimized for maximizing our production (or earning) for the sake of concurrently maximizing our consumption. Whatever our culture may imply, more money does not yield more happiness. At least not in such a direct relationship.
Money offers the opportunity for more happiness. Your range of options is wider when you are financially independent, but simply having those possibilities is not enough. You have to make use of them. But here’s the catch. Making the fullest, most satisfying use of your life is actually really hard.
Now, luckily, it is not “hard” in the sense that working in a coal mine for 16 hours a day, 7 days a week is “hard.” In fact, I’ve met some people who seem to prefer the coal mine. They keep racking up more and more money for the sake of being able to “start living really well” later on. But I assure you, they have no clue what that looks like. What makes it hard to live a good life is that no one else can tell you how to do it. Friends and mentors can supply an outsider perspective, and maybe some guidance. But what it ultimately takes is rigorous self-honesty, courage, and a willingness to struggle with the unknowable.
You have to learn for yourself what a worthwhile life looks like to you. This is harder than you might think, because it is often hard to discern between what you think and what the world thinks. The world thinks it is good to be impressive, to rack up accomplishments, possessions, and to be really, really special. These are ways of crying out, “look how important I am!” But however loudly you should, you are only yelling into the void.
Often, what would really be good and worthwhile is something that you can’t understand at first. The path of achievement is often quite clear, but the path of self-discovery is shrouded in a dense fog. It isn’t apparent where it will lead, who you will meet, or how you will pay your bills. The only assurance will come from within. But even that voice rarely says, “it will all be okay.” Instead, it says only, “I must.”
Although it is easy to ignore that voice, you ignore it at your own peril.
This brings us back to death. Death is not a shame. People die all the time. In fact, God Himself seems to have no problem with death. He takes them all. Old, young, sick, healthy, cowardly, brave…doesn’t matter. Death is the part of life that you cannot change. Now, you give death some window dressing, by trying to die with some dignity, which is to say dying peacefully and willingly. But what terrifies people about death is not the pain of passing, it’s the uncertainty.
The uncertainty cuts through every part of life. Did I live well? What happens to me after I pass? What happens to everyone I leave behind?
Death is helpful because it forces us to grapple with these questions. Otherwise, we never would. And I mean that. I think if we had an eternity to procrastinate, we would spend all of it putting off this very real and important work. We’d try to have as much fun as possible, chasing thrills, placating our egos, and trying to rack up personal fortunes and accomplishments that would declare how “enough” we are.
If you were to die tomorrow, how would you feel while looking back over your life? Now, even the best life is bound to have some regrets, and that’s okay. The question is whether we are talking about small regrets or big regrets. Small regrets are minor embarrassments, “I wish I hadn’t done that, or said that. I wish I had handled that differently.” But mostly they leave the broad arc of your life more or less intact.
Big regrets are another matter, and these are important because they are clues to what you could do with your life that would be most satisfying and meaningful. Often, they aren’t about how things worked out, but whether you gave it a try in the first place. Suppose you always felt the itch to write a book. Or to start a business. Or to tell your kids the truth about something from your past. If you never do it, that’s a big loss for the world, something that will always be missing from the world.
Big regrets could also be about your relationships. They might include how you showed up for others (or didn’t), whether you were kind, supportive, and accepting. Whether you took responsibility for your own emotions. Whether you had the courage to be true to who you really are, and to share that with people.
Death freaks people out because it comes attached to some deep introspection about these big regrets. Often, these realizations can be painful, particularly if you stuff them back down and keep ignoring them. And this is what most people seem to do, with the result that we are about as unhappy as a society as we have ever been. We can blame “the media” or instagram or whatever for making us dissatisfied about our lifestyles, but we have only ourselves to blame if we are dissatisfied with how we have spent our lives.
This is why when we talk about death in our culture, it is mostly about making it as painless and easy as possible (an extension of our consumerist value system), and postponing it as long as possible (partly to allow for more years of consumerism, partly to postpone the object of our fears). These are easy adjustments because they do not get to the real meat of the issue. And so, while they are practical improvements, they don’t lead to soul-level insight that would call us to improve our lives here and now.