Reflections on Mortality

Reflections on Mortality: What Does It Matter?

Fred Allebach 2/24/13

By the time you’re dead, you’ll never know how long you lived, so what does it matter then if you live 5, 10, 60 years or 85? To our egos yes it matters because it seems as if each month, each year adds up to a larger cumulative whole. If we live longer, we’ve had more life, and more is better than less. But who will be there to measure after we are gone? You won’t be and soon enough, no one you know will be either. And since at death your life and consciousness is extinguished, there will be no way to for you to measure that you have had more or less. Therefore it doesn’t really matter in the big picture because there is no way to tell from the side of eternal silence whether you have had more or less life. It only matters to the living how much life you had.

Let’s say for example that I want to do such and such hikes, do such and such projects, travel to such and such places, learn such and such songs, learn to appreciate Mozart, OK, that is all fine and good. This is how I occupy myself in life, with my interests. This is what life is all about, following my path. It is destiny only in the sense that wherever I am, that is my destination. It doesn’t really matter what that destination is for me or you or whoever. It is what it is. All the hopes and desires of an individual person are what drives them through life. But from the side of eternal rest, there is no quantifying a life, there’s nobody from over there to say anything, there is no difference then between someone who died at age 10 and someone who died at age 90; neither of them dead is in a position to know how long they lived relative to anyone else.

All the cumulative joy, knowledge, experience and wisdom you may ever have, that will be stripped away. The fullness of each moment you ever had, the memory of that, you only have it now; that’s as much as you can possess, today, now. When you die it’s as if a cosmic reset button is pushed and all lives and all people are equal; that’s it; each life but a puff of smoke, the breath of a buffalo on a frozen prairie morning.

You’re going to get what you get and in the end no one will know who had more or less. After a few generations have gone by the huge majority of people who lived and died will be totally forgotten.

This brings up one reason you might try to have more rather than less life, so you can accumulate more of a legacy, either in terms of artistic expression, writings and discoveries, the amassing of more wealth etc. This is the only way you can defeat the finality of eternal silence, the creation of a transcending legacy that will be remembered by many people across long periods of time and space, Johann Sebastian Bach for example, Galileo, Andrew Carnegie, Mother Teresa, Plato, etc.

Another reason you might try for more life is so the quality of life for your associates won’t suffer from you being gone forever while they are currently not gone forever. While it will not matter to you in the end if you lived more or less, it will matter to your friends and family because during their allotted time, they will know you’re gone.  Thus you can forestall suffering of friends and family by eating well, exercising etc, to prolong your life, because in the moment, which is all we really have, we are conscious of being happy or not, and having someone special gone for good impinges on happiness in the moment.

In the end it matters to none, as all memories, family and friends will all be silent forever; there will be no ultimate quantifying of our lives. Into the vastness of eternity we will be extinct, forever and ever, extinct along with 90% of all of life that has come before us.

“In the end human thought accomplishes so little. It’s wings are strong, but not as strong as the destiny which gave them to us. It will not let us escape nor reach any further than it desires. Our journey is predestined and, after a brief roaming which fills us with joy and expectation, we are drawn back again as the falcon is drawn back by the leash in the hand of the falconer. When shall we attain liberty? When will the leash be severed and the falcon soar into the open spaces?

-When? Will it ever be? Or is it not the secret of our being that we are and always will be bound to the hand of the falconer? If this were changed then we would cease to be human beings and our fate would not longer be that of humanity.

The Dwarf

Par Lagerkvist, 1945, p.53

It is only for the moment in which we now live that anything matters, and for that we may want to prolong our time, for the sake of others with whom we share this eternal moment. Our only destiny is to live and die, and to experience all the moments in between.

I am, now. There will be a time when I am not. Read this typical Black Death era phrase from the tomb of Edward the Black Prince, 1330-1376:

Whoso thou be that passeth by;

Where these corps entombed lie:

Understand what I shall say,

As at this time speak I may.

Such as thou art, sometime was I,

Such as I am, such shalt thou be.