ACCEPTING AGING AND DEATH
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| The Emperor from Hans Holbein's Dance of Death (1523-25) |
Humans have adapted rapidly to The Universe. On the one hand, this has led to organized religious beliefs. "We must be ordained by God....," and the like. Nonsense in the 2100th Century of human (homo sapiens) time. If this assertion offends you, you should read more anthropology, archaeology, ancient history and genetic science. In other words, catch up.
We are not ordained by God. We were not transplants from some advanced alien species. There is no hard evidence for either of these fantasies. Our species advances through intentions and accidents of discovery. This we know all too well. Unfortunately, religion has retarded our effective adaptation to this reality.
Nuclear energy and nuclear devastation are hard evidence of our mortal and capricious reality. We may have developed the ability to travel through nearby Space, but we do not know how to undo our development of of an energy source which could obliterate us from The Universe by our own careless undoing.
We have love/hate relationships with just about everything in our existence. It is human wiring, not just a Freudian construct. Divorce rates, child abuse, pet abuse, elder abuse, etc...are evidence. Abandonment is as much a part of human relations as adoption. Experiencing sexual lust and sexual loathing toward the same object is a basic human trait, entwined with hormonally driven emotions.
Our love/hate relationship with death is obvious in all cultures. Imagining The Divine is balanced with imagining The Devil in all kinds of media. Glorious afterlife is balanced by vampire immortality or zombie hell.
Despite our fantasies, we are all destined to die as a machine dies when its physical construction fails. The average number of heartbeats of a human heart is under 4 billion. I encourage you to calculate how many you have already used up, based on the average 80 beats per minute. I have already used up about 3 billion. So, my clock is really ticking loudly in my ears. And, if 4 billion heartbeats are afforded a person who lives to be 100 or thereabouts, then my 3 billion at age 70 makes mathematical sense.
Is this reality at all morbid or gloomy? Is the sun gloomy? Is a snowflake falling from the sky gloomy? No. We are all simply part of a natural reality. What divides us most often is the denial of that commonality by politics, religion and human greed for money and the illusion of invincibility.
No one is invincible. Muhammed Ali, the famous prize fighter, began his career with the hubris of someone who perceived himself as invincible. There is no better documentation of the illusory nature of that belief than the video record of Ali's life. Behold the old Ali who could no longer control his own body's movements or his vocal articulation.
The earlier a person accepts mortality as the end of their timeline, the more productive they are likely to be with whatever talents or intelligence is afforded them.
I pose this hypothesis from personal observation and experience. I have witnessed the effect of a terminal diagnosis on my patients, my friends and on myself. The most common reaction is one of clarity of purpose or desire. The bucket list is a bourgeois hobby for those who are still bargaining with mortality. The terminally ill zero in on on their core sense of completion of some life goal or purpose.
Living with that clarity has been one of my few consolations while surviving a terminal diagnosis for the past 25 years. That clarity has allowed me to eliminated a great deal of stress as I pursued goals and relationships which mattered most to me. This collection of essays is evidence of one of those goals: To become a writer who can express worthwhile thought and reflection coherently.
However many heartbeats I use up is really irrelevant to me. What matters is my acceptance that they will run out sooner than I can anticipate. That is the great liberator from fear and anxiety over the irrelevant.
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