We’re All Going to Die (And That’s Okay)
We are all going to die. Just a fact, simply stated, and yet unavoidably a much more dramatic sentiment to most people. Add an exclamation point and suddenly it’s a panicked shout. Add trailing periods and it becomes a dark, brooding observation from some morbid poet.
Really though, when taken at face value, no punctuation, no context, no emotion, “we’re all going to die” is just an innocuous statement of fact. It happens at different points in each of our lives, and we may not agree on what happens before, during, or after, but if there’s one truth you can count on absolutely, it’s that one day your body will cease to function.
Yet telling someone “You’re going to die” is heard with offense and maybe even fear, when really you might as well have told them “You breathe oxygen.”
How did we get to the point where the subject of death has to be depressing, religious, scientific, or just plain taboo? Why did death come to be referred to as “moving on”? The implication is that death is not final, as if the time we’re alive is nothing but a transition.
To me, recognizing and accepting that we are all mortal should be a key step in realizing we should stop worrying about the state of our souls and concentrate on the idea that life should be lived. Not lived to the extreme necessarily, but just plain lived, in whatever manner each individual sees fit.
More than a fear of death, I think most people fear that what we accomplish has no meaning, that we’ve made no lasting impact. Either that, or death is the final proof that we have no control over our destinies.
But here’s the thing: recognizing you’re mortal doesn’t have to be depressing. It can be liberating. When you accept that this is temporary, every moment becomes more precious, not less.