Today, like most days, I was thinking about time. We can travel forward through it but can’t travel back (concept of spacetime). I shared this insight with my partner, and she replied, “Existentialism is scary.” Hearing her say that reminded me of the struggles I faced when coming to terms with my own mortality, and I wanted to share with you an idea that I told her.

Thinking about death is like stepping into a hot tub for the first time. You dip your toe in there, and it feels uncomfortably hot. It’s painful. If you stop there, take a break, and then try again, you will feel the same pain and discomfort each time. The way you really find comfort is to slowly sink your whole body into the hot tub and normalize the feeling of the heat. It will be uncomfortable at first, but after the first wave of pain and shock, relief starts to come. Before you know it, you are relaxed and thoroughly enjoying your time in the tub. 

Now, most people wouldn’t use “relaxing” to describe their experience thinking about their mortality, but I would ask those people to reconsider. I know just speaking about it could cause you to click off of this post and forget you ever read it, but I challenge you to sink into the feeling and think more deeply. The more we confront this feeling, the more power we have to reframe it in a way that gives us energy instead of grief. Let’s sit with it together while I walk you through my own thoughts of discomfort.

Whenever I think about death, the first word that comes to my mind is mourning. I mourn the idea of the everlasting “Joseph.” All of this work that I have put into my personality, my self-actualization, my ability to socialize, and my ability to do good in the world is going to end one day. It feels like my life will have been for nothing. In moments like this, I find it best to realize how small I really am. 

I am not the center of the universe (no matter how much that feels true some days), and whenever I leave, no one outside of my circle of influence will care. The world will continue to spin. Time will continue to flow…I will just no longer be a part of it. The world was very, very alive and capable before I existed. I popped up midway through humanity’s story and won’t live to see the end of it, but that is ok! Realizing that I am just “along for the ride” is actually quite freeing. 

Many things about your outlook change whenever you realize you are just along for the ride. You instantly get a little less hard on yourself for the little things you may have felt bad about before. Whenever you see problems in the world, you do what you can to address them but quickly find yourself remembering that it isn’t your job to fix everything. Your one job is to live each day to the fullest. Those other, worldly problems are much bigger than you, and it is not your responsibility to fix them all by the time you reach the finish line.

The final concept I want to discuss in this post is the idea of losing the ones you love. This is one of the most heartbreaking parts of realizing your own mortality. The idea is that you will one day say goodbye to those you love for the last time and that they will fade into the fuzzy blackness we emerged from whenever we were born. This one is tough, but realizing that your loved ones will pass is a way to enjoy their company even more.

If you know that you are one day going to lose your parents, doesn’t that just want to make you hug them that one more time before you leave for the day? Doesn’t that inspire you to pick up the phone more often and ask them how they are doing? While we can’t give our loved ones a pill that will extend their life, we can use our shared fate to inspire us to love them more. It’s hard to lose the people you care about the most, but the real tragedy of one’s life would be to live without loving. Make connections. Let yourself get hurt by loving people as much as possible and feeling shattered at their loss. Pain is a reminder that you are alive.

So, next time you find yourself accidentally reminded that you are going to cease to exist one day, don’t run away from it. Think about it for a second. Sink into the “hot tub of death”. Before you know it, you might start seeing the “mundane” things around you with new eyes and find a new appreciation for the ones that you love. As I’ve said before, “Death Makes Life Beautiful”.