Human beings are in a very peculiar position. Everything we love is threatened by impermanence and we know it.
We are standing in the middle of a railroad with a clear view of a train rushing towards us, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We all know we’re going to die.
There have been many attempts to manage this most fundamental of existential anxieties. Religion has offered an answer by positing an afterlife. Sacred texts tell us that this life is just a small part of an eternal plan. If we believe that, we can take comfort knowing that one day we will enter a place beyond time.
But for modern people this answer is untenable. There is nothing empirical about our notions of heaven or hell. We are forced to take them on faith and for many of us that’s not possible.
The Enlightenment gave us the tools to break away from faith-based presuppositions. We used them to saw off the sacred branches we were sitting on. Now we are falling into the void.
What might be a suitable secular response to our death anxiety?
I don’t expect to adequately answer this in a Substack post (also if secular means materialist I doubt there even is a good answer). Nevertheless here’s something practical that helps me:
Live life in day-tight compartments.
This dictum has been attributed to Dale Carnegie and William Osler. We’ve also heard Jesus Christ’s version of it:
“Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself.” Matthew 6:34
The basic insight is that your day is a microcosm of your life. Imagine that each wake-sleep cycle is analogous to a broader life-death cycle. In a weird way, every time you go to sleep you are practicing dying.
“Sleep is the cousin of death.” - Nas
Have you ever had a day that was so glorious and full that you felt like you finally earned your sleep? A day that ends with you lying in bed feeling deeply satisfied and fulfilled? In such a sate, drifting into unconsciousness feels particularly welcome.
If you know what I’m talking about, you’ll also know that you don’t even need to have a “perfect” day for this to happen. Often it’s sufficient that you approached your day with earnestness or heart. Perhaps you had a day that was just marginally better than the day before. Perhaps you were just a bit more engaged with your life.
I think this is what we’re all after. We all want a sense of deep fulfillment at the end of our days. We also want to feel this at the end of our lives.
So live your life in day-tight compartments. Act as if your bed is your deathbed. Trust your instincts on what this means for you and behave accordingly.
The beautiful news is that most of us have thousands of chances to get it right. Each day is a new opportunity to practice. Each day we can get a bit better at learning how to die.
- Daniel