Busy not being (day 183)

I overheard someone talk about her realization that she was living someone else's life.  She talked of getting married early ("you were married?") and building an image of what she thought others wanted to see ("you know?").  She divorced,  went to art school and learned to do and say what she really feels ("that sounds great").  I didn't turn around to see how old she was.  The sound of her voice was mid-thirties.  I had the urge to ask her how she knows she's not still living up to an image.  There are so few genuine people.  I could still hear fear in her voice.

A song for this post.

Spend to live another day (day 6)

A few months ago I finished listening to the audio version of the book "The denial of death" by Ernest Becker (I don't really recommend the audiobook, it's a bit relentless. But I do recommend the documentary "Flight from Death" derived from the book). The book postulates that our refusal to look at death directly makes us blindly spend our energy to "immortality projects", thing that will transcend death or make us feel part of a greater whole that will live on. It can also increase our intolerance of those who don't support our grand project. One example is the nationalistic feeling that compels us to support the troops, or whatever else is meant to make the 'us' bigger than 'them'. If asked I bet most people would assume that if our life was longer, trending to immortality say, our fear of death would diminish. The point made in the book which has stayed with me is that accidental death would not disappear and that if the possibility of living forever existed, our preservation extinct would increase in proportion. The example they give is that it is much more tragic to die at 7 if you could live forever. This is probably why vampires are always given super healing powers with very specific ways to die. If dying was too easy, the immortality would be meaningless. If there was no way to die, the immortality would be a life sentence. The other problem with immortality (one that was beautifully illustrated in the last Godric episode of True Blood) is that laziness would be rampant. Why do today what you could do tomorrow? Death is a powerful motivator. And not just big death, all the little deaths too. We do a lot to keep things from deteriorating. It is an interesting exercise to think of what motivation might exist outside it, or in spite of it.

We want to live forever. It's true, the fear of death permeates our being and influences the amount of the risk we are willing to take. This is why most of us take fewer risks as we get older. I would even say that it's why most of us gain weight as we get older. It's a protection instinct. We think if we expend less of our life energy we'll have more later -- a savings account approach to life which turns out to have disastrous consequences. The less you move, the sicker you get. That's just the way it goes. I think it's probably best to embrace the impermanence and just spend spend spend that life energy.