“We have lost our freedom with the culture wide denial of death. For once you know, truly know that you are going to die, there is no way you can take this world with the same deadly humorlessness. A crack runs through your identification with your own life. You start to see forever disappearing and see the insubstantial nature of objects and events. You start to intuit that the only solid thing is the very thing that seemed the least substantial of all: consciousness itself.” - Christopher Gray
Denying death, fearing and ignoring it and pretending that we are unaffected by it, does not make us immortal. But, it does give us a false sense of having time.
We might think that it is unhealthy to think of our death. That it is useless or morbid.
But what are the implications of such a denial?
By denying death we engage in an illusion of immortality. An illusion of having time.
An immortal person is unaffected by time. The concept is meaningless to them.
An immortal person has all of the time in the world. Time even to waste.
Which is what an immortal person does.
They waste precious moments that could be their last.
An immortal person gets angry. They get offended by others.
They may even be miserable in their daily life when things do not go as planned.
An immortal person spends their time waiting for something spectacular to happen.
Waiting for unique moments of great payoff.
Waiting for happiness to be delivered to them in some distant future.
But there is no future.
Such a thing exists as a figment of our imagination.
A thought in our mind.
The cold truth.
We do not have time. None of us.
Even if we ignore death, or deny it, we are going to die.
And we do not know when.
It could even happen at any moment without warning.
And so, if we are not happy in this moment right now, then we are wasting what could be our last moments of being alive.
So look around.
Breathlessly.
As if it were your last moment.
Because for all you know, it really is.