Fearing the inevitable is futile

I am incredibly afraid of not living, or rather dying not having lived a full life. It's important to remind yourself how you define your life and don't let others dictate what's worth your while.

What is YOUR life about?

I believe that your life is about the people and things you spend your emotional energy on, what are you putting your love and happiness towards?

Here’s a quick exercise, check your clock, add 2 minutes, or use this timer.

For the first minute consider: during the 15 hours you’re awake a day, where does your emotional energy go? Some places to start: work, family, significant other, insecurities, etc

For the next minute ask yourself if you’d be happy to do this for the next 10-20 years?

Now that you’ve completed this, ask yourself the following: is your life being controlled by someone else’s goals, are you trying to satisfy someone else, your inner child, a crush, a fictitious goal? Don’t tell anyone your answer, you don’t have to write it down, just think about it.

I’m of the belief that you should be trying to satisfy yourself today. There’s no guarantee of anything in this world except that there is now, and there may not be a “later”. Consider this modern example: if you are spending any time during your day curating a social media post - this (almost certainly) isn’t to satisfy yourself, unless you have 0 followers and are set to private. Something more relevant for adults: if you’re spending too long at work - is this to satisfy your boss or boss’s boss, or do you love your board/shareholders? If any of these things you’re doing are not for you - I ask that you be thoughtful about where your emotional energy goes. In this last example I do recognize the privilege and aspect of work being a means to an end, but if the end is not for yourself - it’s possible these means aren’t worth it.

Diving deeper into the social media aspect, even the folks you follow that post about “real life” still had to consider what they were going to post. Inherently - no matter how “real” you try to make your social media there is a certain amount of bias. To me, real life is what happens in your brain that you can share with someone if you want, it is not the curated version of your internet self that you give others. Now it follows that you think that livestreams are closer to real - but the camera being there means this is a performance of some sort - no matter what, we can’t see inside anyone’s thoughts, so we can’t know what you or others are really feeling. Everything on the internet, due to the fact that it had to be recorded in some way, presents a bias of fiction. This is like the quantum mechanics of emotions on the internet, record it and it’s different.

We’re all going to die

Shit, that’s a weird subtitle, it probably terrifies most of you, it does scare me. I’m sure you’ve heard this all before

We’re all going to die so live life today!!

Whether your like it or not this is true, and I think it is paramount you consider death in order to live. The fact that you can read this post and have a thought in your brain and have even lived this long is so unlikely and miraculous in this vast observable universe that if you don’t recognize that death is coming for you, it’s too easy to not live.

Now that you’ve gotten slightly over the above subtitle I want to tell you that it is not worth being afraid of dying - it’s like being afraid of winter; it’ll always be there, it might come sooner rather than later but it’s inevitable and you have no control over it.

You should never fear the inevitable, it’s out of your control so there’s nothing you can do about it. You should fear your reaction to it if it’s not one that makes you really live. It’s like that saying - you can’t control what happens to you but you can control how you react to it. I truly believe being afraid of death, like other certainties, is a futile spend of your energy.

Death in the West

In western cultures, especially in America, we try to hide from death so much so that we don’t know how to live. Death is taboo and we don’t talk about it much with our friends, we often don’t have extended wakes or open caskets because it’s not something we want to talk about. For some reason we’ve decided that death is too weird or abnormal to make it a point of conversation besides “sorry for your loss”. As opposed to “I’m glad they were here”.

Ultimately, the more you remember that death is coming for you at any given moment the more you will live today.

It is a weird thought to have, and you may not even want to keep reading but your pets, grandparents, parents, friends, and other family will die someday, likely while you’re still alive. If you don’t think about this it is much harder to cherish the moments you have with them. It’s hard to say out loud but my cats and dog will someday all pass away. It makes me teary eyed but shortly after I am smiling really hard. By remembering this I can further cherish each moment I have with them as it is finite, and it’s all they know. My dog has lived a hard life, and if I don’t give her everything I can today, then someday I would wish I gave her more time outside, more treats, more beef, and more snuggles.

Part of our disconnect with death in the west likely comes from moving away from home as you come of age.

Leaving your parents where you grew up to form your life elsewhere, instead of living with them or near them until their end of life is very American. In the East, and in South America, it’s far more normal for grandparents, parents, and kids kids to live all in the same home or community, much like our older tribal selves. I tend to believe that the more and more we disconnect from the elderly, the harder it is to appreciate the life we have as we are not reminded that we’re next.

The natural consequence is such that the elderly in the west may deteriorate far quicker due to the lack of community and support - furthering the loneliness epidemic, leading to a negative feedback loop. Eventually, elderly people may be left without choices, requiring hospice care when they can no longer care for themselves.

This is more of a side thought about what I think can contribute to not living as full of a live as is out there

Balancing working and living

Some call this work life balance, some even try to call this work-life integration. Whatever you want to call it, in whatever century we speak about, there is working, and separately there is leisure, or living.

Going back to the initial exercise, the easiest example for me to convey the importance of knowing where my emotional energy goes is considering my work life balance. I typically work 45 hour weeks, happily. I really enjoy the people I work with and my work rewards me for the time and effort I put in. However, as soon as I’m off work I feel that I enter my “real life”, to me it’s not just leisure, but it really feels like I just entered my real life.

To me that is my pets, my friends, my family, and the city that I live in. Working is only so important that it funds the rest of my life. My purpose lies in providing for my family and giving me space to challenge myself physically and mentally outside of work. I tend to think most people I meet think similarly, work is work and life is life. There is a portion of the working population where work is work, and that’s that, the rest of life is also surrounded by work.

I’ve met plenty of people that if they are bored will work even more - there is no reason to believe this is wrong. When supplemental work makes you happy then you are living life for you.

I used to envy coworkers who loved to work after work and were happy to do so - thinking they’ll get further in their career than me. When I consider the underlying reason I’m no longer envious - we both are living our lives for us - my priorities lie more in giving my dog treats and working on hard runs - whereas these folks get more fulfillment from working extra hours - there’s no telling who is actually happier!

Whoever you may be on this spectrum, if you don’t examine it then you are working for external reasons, to me that’s a fatal mistake. My takeaway here is whether or not you love to work, or love your job, it is important to be mindful if that’s where you plan to put your emotional energy.

If you’re sure of your choice then you are doing great, if not - think about why, is it because of certain expectations, are you trying to be a role model, do you not know why?

Should I not be afraid of anything then?

Fear is inherent to us as humans. Our body has an autonomous set of mechanisms to handle fear, our sympathetic nervous system. It is one of the most natural feelings ever, to be afraid of danger so that we may live. Babies cry when they’re in danger so their parent comes to their rescue, not really because they love their parent (they can’t even see after birth), but because we must live no matter what.

If we are afraid of things we have no control of, we are spending energy on something we can’t do anything about - it’s double the worry, thanks Newt Scamander. It’s like being afraid of nuclear war - sure it’s a bad thing, but if it happens do you really think being afraid of it will change anything?

Yes, you should have fear, but I think it’s far more fruitful to spend your fearful energy on not making changes or choices in your life. If you live life being controlled by someone else’s desire this should be terrifying. Someone, or some people, who is not in your mind and heart is dictating what you should do. If you don’t take risks because you think someone is going to think of you differently then you’re afraid of a thought you’ll never have. If you don’t live every single day the way you want to live it, who are you living for.

FIRE

I often think about the FIRE movement, a growing community of people who sacrifice life experiences today for the hope that in the future you’ll have enough money to do whatever you want. Financial Independence, Retire Early, or so that’s the goal. I have trouble belonging to this community as hoping to be alive in the future with all the money I saved and invested means I didn’t life as full as I wanted to today.

As a side note I don’t think I’ll ever retire, no matter my age - my mind and body are so hard wired to have a working purpose, that living on the beach or in the wilderness without a raison d’être seems like torture to me. I will travel but living without a job - whether it’s mine or for someone else seems to work against my DNA. At least that’s how I feel at 25.

I’m 14 and this is deep

I can fully understand if you read this and think it’s nothing new, I’ve heard this a million times before. Reference here. I want you to ask yourself if you really have thought about the above, like really have gotten over the fear and ego to consider your death.

I’ll leave you with a couple simple thoughts - if you see yourself in 10 years looking back - will you be happy with the choices (or lack of choices) you’re making? Will your future self be happy with where you spent those 10 years worth of emotional energy? This should be enough to make you think about your life.

Take it from Socrates - an unexamined life is not worth living - if you go through the motions of life without considering why you do what you do, I am both sorry and envious of you. You could live the most average, typical life, but if you examine it deeply you are suddenly so much more fulfilled, and that life was suddenly worth it. It’s worse to die going through motions than to examine these motions.

You must take risks today because life is too uncertain to hope for tomorrow, simply, work towards tomorrow but live for today.