Dying Is For Everyone

by Goldwin Emerson

From the moment of our birth we begin to age. And with aging comes an inevitable and inescapable progression towards death. For those who think about it at all, and many prefer not to, death becomes a part of our lives. The reality of death reminds us that we have limits upon our activities, our hopes and our dreams. Death circumscribes our lives and thoughtful people include the reality of death in our outlook about life.

Of course, there are many ways of dealing with the fact of death. Usually when we are young, death seems so far away that we don't give it much thought. For most young people, their own individual death seems so many years into the future that it is difficult to contemplate even if one tries hard to do so. Unless a classmate or a friend of our own age dies, the idea of death doesn't touch our lives very much. For many children, the death of a grandparent or a favourite aunt or uncle can force them into an abrupt encounter with death. They might wonder, perhaps for the first time, how could it be that their friend who was so very much alive yesterday is no longer with them today. Where could she/he be? Thus a limited number of young people are forced into recognizing the death of a friend. However, even this recognition falls far short of thinking about one's own death. If I am a teenager and my friend is killed in a traffic accident or an accidental drowning, I could be shocked and saddened, but I am still unlikely to think much about my own personal death. I will leave that thought for another day and a future time.

When we are middle-aged we will have had more time to encounter the deaths of friends, colleagues, parents or relatives. These experiences may have given us reason to think about the reality and finality of death. But we are also likely be busy in the ongoing matters of developing our career plans, paying off our house mortgages, raising and educating our children, establishing good relationships with our spouses or partners or any number of other things that we will encounter in the daily business of living. If we are adherents of a traditional religion, we may possibly be comforted by the hopes and promises of an eternal afterlife. These religious promises can help to alert us to the inevitability of death but the everyday demands on our time and energy might convince us that thinking about death is something that we will choose to defer until a later time.

As we become senior citizens the question of our own death emerges more eminently. By this time in our lives more friends, relatives, former colleagues and acquaintances will have died. Our physical and health problems will be more frequent and prominent. Perhaps we will take longer to think through fairly simple problems as clearly and as accurately as we once did. Our energy levels will decrease, and learning to operate new inventions and electronic gadgets becomes more challenging. Hooking up a new digital video disc player, or installing a new program on our computer can turn a half hour job into a half day project. Since we are probably retired we will have more time by ourselves to contemplate our achievements and our disappointments.

As seniors, we may have a traditional religious faith. But once again, we may not be comforted by the thoughts and promises of an afterlife, especially if these hopes are balanced against the possibility of eternal damnation. Our increasing age could cause us to hope more enthusiastically that such religious promises are well-founded, but the urgency of questions about death might demand more certainty than our reasoned scepticism will permit us to accept. It is possible that even after adhering to such traditional religious answers for many years of our lives we can not bring ourselves to hope and believe in such ethereal promises.

If we are humanists, and seniors at that, it is unlikely that we will find much comfort or value in the religious promises of an eternal and glorious afterlife. We will find that too many mental gymnastics are required in order to convince ourselves. Our tradition of using our reasoning and common sense will not permit us to be comforted by religious faith that promises so much on so little evidence.

So what can we do, or more importantly, what can we think that will help us to fit the reality of our personal death into this life? What will provide our lives with fullness and meaning given the fact that we, and everyone else whom we know, and don't know, will die? What will permit us to say, “I know I am getting older, and I know that I will die, but that’s okay”?

These are hard questions to answer. They are even difficult questions to ask in the first place. I suppose that in the long run, each person must find her or his own answers to this most personal event of our lives, our very own deaths. So the answers which follow are given with the full recognition that they are my answers and they may not make sense or give comfort to others although I hope that many of them can resonate favourably with fellow humanists.

1. Practise using your past strengths and talents to create a better world in the here and now. Use your senior years to improve society, and you will feel better about your own accomplishments. This will help you from becoming discouraged about modern events and ongoing changes in society. You will feel more valued as you become more useful to others.

2. Recognize your own talents, but equally important, be aware of your own limitations. As you notice more demands upon your energy, be willing to set realistic goals about what things you can achieve well and which tasks are too taxing for you to succeed in the way that you and others would like. If you can afford to do so, let others help you with difficult jobs such as outdoor painting or mowing the lawn or housework.

3. Enjoy each day to the fullest. Consider it a true gift each day that you are free from pain or worry or poverty or calamity. If you are religious then thank God for life. But if you are not religious be equally thankful for your life and happiness and for the universe we live in. Remember that every atom in your body was once inside a star.

4. Change your interests and activities in keeping with your energy and abilities. If you used to run a couple of kilometres a day, it's okay to walk instead, even if you do so only a few times a week. If you are tired after you babysit your grandchildren for one day don't be surprised or disappointed in yourself. It's a normal feeling for grandparents to experience.

5. As we age, problems with our health or our finances or our relationships may develop. Try not to burden others unduly with our own problems. When people ask “How are you?” they are not asking for a long recital of all the aches and pains we have daily. As Dr. Andrew Mason observed, “Sainthood emerges when you can listen to someone else's tale of woe and not respond with a description of your own.”

6. Don't alienate yourself from your family and from best friends by insisting on doing things in the same way that you have become used to. Be willing to consider new ideas, attempt new approaches or visit new places.

7. Be happy in the achievements that you have already accomplished. Let younger people take on some of the responsibility for the tasks that you have been doing even if they will do these activities and tasks in a way which is different from your own.

8. Accept less. That is, be willing to become a little less demanding of yourself. With this more relaxed approach comes more peace of mind and an acceptance of the finality of life. Avoid the desperate belief that the future success of society or of your family depends upon you.

9. Let reasonableness and not blind faith or fantasy be your guide. Having a clear mind and an acceptance of the inevitability of death is important in the understanding of the nature of life. This realization actually helps you to get more out of daily living  as each day becomes more precious.

10.Be comforted in the thought that, although you are personally not immortal, much of what you accomplish in your life can live on in the lives of your family and your acquaintances. Others can learn from your examples of good living, good attitudes, and constructive actions. There is a meaningful kind of immortality to the good things that you have accomplished during your life because these attitudes and achievements will live on in all the people whose lives you have touched.. “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is wasted”. (Aesop)

11.Be happy in what you can do. Don’t be afraid to downsize your activities according to your energy and abilities. If you can do any one of the following things, such as write a letter, phone or visit a friend, read a book, take a daily walk, or engage in your favourite hobbies, be content.

12. To the extent possible, forgive others. It is damaging to ourselves to dwell on the offences of others. Parents, siblings, spouses, and fellow workers were not likely perfect in all things, but on balance, they probably did the best they could. And even if they didn’t, hanging onto old grudges and feelings of unfair treatment will eat away at our own happiness. Even more important, forgive yourself for your own mistakes. After you have done the best you can to remedy your own errors and to learn from them, put these concerns behind you and move on.

13. There is a built-in acceptance of death that automatically comes about with down-sizing of abilities and ambitions. As we become less capable there is, psychologically, less life to give up. This feeling occurs in a natural way, and it can be found in younger people as well. For example, a child who is starving to death, as many thousands do daily, will have less desire to live and less resistance to death. Similarly, patients who have terminal illnesses come to a natural and rational conclusion that death is a welcome event. Of course, these two examples are much more extreme than what normally happens in our old age, but the principles involved are the same. In other words, death becomes less feared and less traumatic as we age.

14. People fear the process of dying more than they fear being dead. This phenomenon has often been talked about throughout history. One of the most notable examples is that of the death of Socrates who according to Plato, said, “ There is great reason that death is a good; for one of two things.... either there is not consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams..... (If so) death will be an unspeakable gain.... for eternity is then only a single night;Or death is a journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide... what good can be greater than that? ” In a lighter vein, Mark Twain expressed a similar idea in these words: “I do not fear death in view of the fact that I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” It is often the process of dying, and in particular the possibility of pain while dying, that people fear. This is a fear that is just as likely to be present among those who believe in eternal life as among those for whom death is regarded as the end of life.

15. Traditional religion offers the hope of eternal bliss in heaven, but it counter-balances this happy promise with the ominous threat of eternal damnation, as stated in Matthew 7, verse 13, "Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." In its most literal sense, the alternative to heaven is eternal burning in hell, and in its most fundamental interpretation this dual package of promises can hardly offer much comfort, even to its adherents, without assurance as to which route one's own soul is headed. Many people who have converted from traditional religion to humanist thinking find a great sense of relief when they are able to put such starkly contrasting promises behind them.

16. We can be comforted in the thought that we have lived a good life. There is joy and happiness in being able to look back on the events of living and the decisions we have made, which on balance, have been more positive than negative. If our families, our places of work, our communities, or perhaps even the world, have been made even a little better because of us, this is cause for satisfaction and hope. This is cause for believing that our life has been worthwhile.

17. Rejoice in the thought of our own unique lives. It could very easily have happened that we had never been born. What a wonderful opportunity it has been to have the chance to be alive. It was not a decision of our own doing that we came into existence. Our life is a gift from our parents, or more accurately, from nature. The fact that we exist at all means that we are truly children of the universe.

18. There are few aids to healthy aging that are more important than an optimistic attitude and a sense of humour. Finding humour in the normal frustrations of life can help to keep us from dwelling too much on the discouraging aspects of aging. Humour can actually lengthen our lives and increase our enjoyment of the relatively brief time we have in this wonderful experience of living. Finally, in the words of Mark Twain, "there is no cure for birth or death except to enjoy the interval."