So, here’s the deal.
We are born helpless. And then, guided and cared for by our parents and other adults, we spend the first few years of our lives figuring out our moving parts. We learn to speak and walk. We explore and attempt to conquer the wonders of this place where we have found ourselves. We form attachments. And, given the right circumstances, we achieve some mastery and sense of belonging. In general, we come to feel pretty comfortable with, and accustomed to, our surroundings. We are at home in the world.
But, sooner or later, comes a shock. One day, while we are minding our own business, not looking for trouble, feeling secure in our lives -- it happens: We discover death. We learn that we and everyone we love will eventually have to leave this place.
Gaining this knowledge is like being thrown out of Eden. We hadn’t realized it, but permanence was the water we swam in. With our rude awakening to the fact of death, our egos struggle to make sense of the reality that we are not, in fact, permanent fixtures in this world.
Over time, we find various ways of coping with our fears about death. Some choose the path of denial, kicking thoughts of death down the road until it can’t be ignored. Others ponder death, and decide it is the end of all consciousness. Still others believe it will take them to a peopled heaven. I lean toward the Taoist view that we come from wholeness, enter the world of forms, and then, at our death, return to wholeness. I do not, however, have any interest in arguments about what comes next. I am content to abide with the mystery.
So today I don’t want to talk about what death might look like. I, instead, want to talk about our astonishing ability to create meaningful lives in the face of death. And let me begin by saying that by “face of death,” I do not mean living in the face of a prognosis of say, a week, a month, or a year to live. I mean the basic fact that we’re all going to die.
Period.
We live in an impossibly fragile world, filled with dangers and ultimate death. And yet we build lives of beauty and purpose. Yes, there seems to be some kind of will-to-live that keeps all animate beings moving forward, but we humans do so much more than simply keep ourselves alive.
We could spend all of our limited time seeking pleasure, selfishly hoarding what we have in order to insure our own well-being. And some do this. But most of us, I think, spend at least as much time on activities that might seem almost quixotic in light of the fact that we will die.
I find this deeply moving.
Here is just some of what we do:
We spend years obtaining an education.
We train for and spend further years at a career.
We fall in love. Indeed, we forge and nurture all manner of relationships, despite certain future loss.
We birth and raise children.
We read and seek knowledge that, as far as we know, will die with us.
We write plays and stories and songs and poems.
We dance. We sing. We paint. We sculpt.
We play games. We run. We ride bikes. We climb mountains.
We cook meals that require far more creativity than is necessary to keep our bodies alive.
We build things – homes, bridges, automobiles.
We discover things – gravity, electricity, the solar system, bacteria.
We invent things – the wheel, writing, the lightbulb, computers.
We travel. We learn languages not native to us.
We build rocket ships that fly to the moon and beyond.
We plant gardens. And, perhaps more surprisingly, we plant trees that won’t mature until after we have died.
Even in previous centuries when humans had a much shorter life expectancy, people got on with creating lives and leaving behind gifts that we enjoy to this day. Take writers, for example. Shakespeare wrote all those plays and sonnets before he passed at age 52. And Keats, well Keats wrote his odes before expiring from TB at age 25. And let’s not forget Austen, who managed to leave us an engaging and lasting record of the manners of her time and place before she died at age 41.
Looking back further to a time when humans lived lives that sixteenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes characterized as “nasty, brutish, and short,” people also got married, had babies, worked, danced, sang, and, in general, seem to have done their best to make something of their lives. As far as we know, this has ever been the human way.
I am in awe of the fact that those who came before us did what they did, and that we do what we do, in spite of the knowledge of our certain future deaths. Or maybe it is that we build lives, not in spite of, but because of our pre-knowledge of death. I don’t know about you, but I am quite the procrastinator when I don’t have a deadline or a structure. Without death, there would be no final deadline. Maybe we would just fritter away our time, knowing that everything could wait until tomorrow. Maybe we would be paralyzed by time without end. Maybe we would be bored.
Maybe death is our friend. Maybe it is what gets us out of bed in the morning.
And maybe if we acknowledge death, we will come to feel comfortable with knowing ourselves to be a part of what the poet Mary Oliver called “the great wheel of growth, decay, and rebirth.” So that even if we do not expect to survive death in any conscious way, we can take comfort in knowing we are participating, along with all other living beings, in the ongoing cycle of life and death.
Here is a little poem from Wendell Berry that helps me to keep my eyes on this cycle and to celebrate my part in it.
When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird.
When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf.
Can we get past our egos to see the beauty in our living and our dying The poet Joe Brainard put it this way: "Death has a very black reputation but, actually, to die is a perfectly normal thing to do. And it’s so wholesome: being a very important part of nature’s big picture. Trees die, don’t they? And flowers?”
Here is some more of what we do:
We care for the sick and dying.
We volunteer our time and give of our resources to help others.
Sometimes we help others in ways that might lead to our own deaths.
We spend time seeking social justice – not just for ourselves, but for others.
Yes, I know there is evil in this world. And ugliness. And unfairness. I know that not all of what we do with our lives is noble. Still, it seems to me that more people than not are working quietly to add something to the lives of those around them, to do some good while they are here. You are not likely to read about these people in the news. But you know them. They are your friends. Your family. Your co-workers. And it is not only those with great resources who add to the beauty and progress of the world. Those with very little also do unto others. In fact, I have read that poor Americans give a larger percentage of their income to charity than middle class Americans.
And when we plant that tree or write that book or work for social justice, or even just go to work every day and come home to feed our families, we are building and contributing to a world that will benefit not only ourselves, but those around us and those who will come after us.
Mary Oliver closed one of her poems with the famous line, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” She seemed to provide an answer when she penned these words in a late-in-life essay: “[H]aving chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life.”
May we all be able to say the same. And when our time comes, may we fall like leaves.
Without regret.
*This post is a condensed version of a talk I gave three years ago at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Vancouver (WA)
