On Death and Hope

 Day 7

Everything here was written in October-November, 2022. There are 52 posts total, one for each day I wrote.

Yesterday I heard about the queen of England passing. Perhaps it isn't much, but when someone like that passes it a bit of a strange passing for someone like me. She wasn't someone I knew, nor was she related to me in any fashion, nor was she my head of state. That is, there isn't anything that would make me personally have strong feelings about her passing. However, she certainly isn't the same to me as a total stranger. After all, I've known who she was almost my entire life. In a way, I knew that she was there, and she was a part of my world for long enough, and mentioned often enough by people I talked to, pictured on money or in television, or written about in pieces of writing I read, that I never forgot her. Her passing isn't, I would say, the loss of a pillar, but it certainly has the effect of a big quake. I imagine that I was prepared for it, and so it isn't a shock, but its still surprising that it happened now, today, all of a sudden. We were prepared, but not ready.

As someone who calls himself a philosopher, I tend to think about death on occasion. By on occasion, of course, I mean every day. I've never quite understood the fear of death. Oh, I understand well enough the fear of the unknown, the fear of dying, the fear of pain and loss, the fear of never finding out what happens in the book, or of never knowing if we kept our home and family safe, or that our life had any lasting impact. Yet, these have seemed to me to be rather more like side-effects of death than of death itself. That is, those things that I tend to picture when I think about fear of death are things that can happen by other way and means. We can still be alive and suffer pain, or never end up learning what happened to something important, or are aware that our life is meaningless. A life of torture and misery has seemed to me to be no worse than death. What then is death itself? What is the passing?

One of the most famous quotes regarding death is that of Hamlet, who says in the play that he dares not die because of his fear of death, his dread of “what dreams may come”. He is fearing experiences after death, a judgment or a price for his actions. Yet, isn't that more like a fear of life? A fear of experiences and shame – a fear of a life after death. In that vision, death is a mere passing over from one plane to the next, from one existence to the next. Yet, that doesn't seem like death to me. It seems like loss and imprisonment. It seems like someone or something placing chains upon your spirit, upon your reality, of deciding what you do and what you experience. Yet, to a great extent, we can find that here as well in this life. Indeed, let someone put chains upon me – if death is not death, then what have I to fear? My identity is in my will, in my choices and actions. Eve if I am reincarnated and forget things, then how is that different from my life already? I forget things all the time, and I'm never quite the same person now, that I was five minutes ago or a year ago. What we fear in times like those is not the thing, the state or action, but rather the degree.

There is another side of death in Hamlets soliloquy. The fear of the unknown. The worry about what may come, not necessarily with anything specific in mind, but rather the most essential part o this fear has generally seemed to me to be a need for safety and for knowledge of place. That is, for a stable world. I said earlier that we seek stable world, for stable worlds are how we survive and live as ourselves. Indeed, the destruction of the world is in large part the destruction of what we think of as the self. Yet, we experience this all the time. The world is always crumbling and changing. I said also that we can ignore that, that we can close ourselves off and try to pretend that is not happening, that there are no unknowns in the world. Yet, we are almost always – almost but not quite always – seemingly forced to acknowledge at least some unknowns. Death holds that place. It is a fate that seems inevitable, that we are aware of and prepare for with wills, and in our will, but are usually not quite ready for. Facing death here, though, is also something similar to what we face in our daily lives; it is the destruction of the world. What makes it more powerful is that it suggests that there is a permanent destruction of the world. An extinguishing of our will, a passing of all that is and the possibility of all that is. In that case, it seems more like a rest than anything else, an eternal sleep.

And is sleep so terrible? I think that if we were to pass entirely, that there would be nothing to fear. If death is inevitable, then the coming of death is simply something that happens like a sun passing over the cloud, and it is less to fear than to be experienced. Again, there is much to fear around death, much to lose and much failure to be ashamed of, but little to dread. Have you faced death and panicked? Have you faced death and thought 'oh well, guess this is it'? These are not types of death, but rather are types of life, ways of living. So, the question of death is not ' how should we die', but rather – 'how should we live'? This of course is not a new idea, but it seems to me that those two thoughts are not really very different thoughts at all. If you think them then you are existing, aren't you?

We can sometimes look forward to death, forward to the passing of the world, either in small ways or in total. Sometimes this is the death of another, the passing of some daemonic part of the world. Sometimes this is the death of ourselves, when life is burden and a torture. So, why choose to die or not to die? There are of course a thousand answers for every thousand people, and so I can only talk of me and mine here, but let me try. I would say that there are two reasons to keep living when life is a torture. The first is curiosity, and the second is hope.

Curiosity is simple – by all appearances, death is not reversible, and I can't exactly go back and try my life again. I also can't know the future, and so I don't know what happens next. I might be that I am wrong and death reveals all time and knowledge to me, but that seems like a bit of a gamble compared to just not throwing myself off a building. Much simpler just to live. If I live, then I know what happens next, I read the next story, see the child grow up, and the landscape changed. If death is inevitable, and life is not, then cling to life while you can just to know what happens. This is a type of reason for living that is to live for – to live for a reason, be it curiosity, family, beauty, victory, or revenge. That there is something you want to achieve to find in life is a reason to keep on living.

The second reason to keep living is hope. If the world has unknowns in it, then we do not know what the future may bring. Horrible pain today may be repaid with glory or justice tomorrow. It has been said that sorrow open up spaces in the heart for joy, that knowledge of the deep dark allows passage to the high sky's. I do not know if this is the case. I do not know if this is not the case.

Remember that you the person is a will, but your the mind and body are part of the world. It is not strange that you should be influenced by your environment, that the wonders and horrors of living experience should determine if you are happy or sad to some extent, if life is worth living. It has been said that life is a matter of your state of mind, as if your state of mind was all up to you. You certainly have some power over your state of mind, but we are not omnipotent. Power is outraced however, because you can see the world in so many ways. Some recommend meditation or the closing off of your mind, but this is not the correct way of meditation. Meditate like that for a time to be sure, but we can also meditate in other ways, by opening up our minds and looking at the world in a new light. This is not closing off your mind, but looking at the world in a new angle. With a single lever we can move the world.

I, on occasion and like many people I think, feel somewhat embarrassed for finding it so difficult to do some things by myself. It seems somehow a weakness of mine that my state of mind should depend so much on outside influenced like pain, loss, sense of freedom, stress, music, and more. That some I should be able to do all things myself, and have all powers within your grasp. Yet, this is due to a mistaken vision of the self. What I am considering there in my idea of shame for being weak is actually my mind, not my self. “The will is the very, the only, the solemn event of things”.* That is, my mind and body were always part of the world. They were always susceptible to outside force. What is not, or had better not be, if my will is free, my free will and the choices that I make. You can chain me up, force my body to move in a certain way, but that is not the same as making me choose to move in a certain way. When you force somebody to do something, what you are forcing is mind and body – you are using force and his will is not manifesting in the world as action or change, as a perceived gem, but that is not the same as destroying the will. Living in hope is living in the idea that this will, this personal and free will that is uniquely you, will be revealed again. This is called living in hope because what is required is both hope, and living. Hope that something may happen, that some miracle will come to pass where you can make a choice. Living is being manifest in the world as, simply existing because to exist in the world is to do something in the world. Your body and the fact of your action are both gems in the world, are both parts of the world. Once they is they is, and while they can be forgotten, I am aware of no way to destroy them utterly.

Even when someone has an angle on you, and uses their lever to shove you to one side or another, that doesn't mean that they always will. Try as you might to be afraid of them, you do not know what they, or you, or someone else, will do. Are you trapped, can you not move, can you not handle this life for one more moment? Make a stupid decision then, bet your life and attempt to do something that is impossible. If you have chosen to die, then life couldn't get any worse. If you haven't chosen to die, then some part of you thinks life might still be worth living. We do inherit the limits of yesterday, but I know of no limits that are really closed off, that are inevitable. We do not know what is inevitable. We do not know what me can do. Let all the scientific books and social priests whisper, let all the old wise ones of the village and the country lecture, let all the demons and the angels pronounce, what will be and yet I shall not believe them. If I exist, then I am free, and then even the gods themselves are as ignorant as me.

*The Kings by Louise Imogen Guiney