Cultivating A Life-Affirming Death Awareness

“It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth-and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up-that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.” (Elisabeth Kubler-Ross)

Facing our feelings about our own death can be a positive thing. Allowing ourselves to experience rather than deny our death-feelings can help us cultivate a life-affirming death awareness. Such awareness can help us to:

• Feel more alive
• Get in touch with what we really want
• Strengthen our sense of purpose
• Make conscious choices about living more fully
• Appreciate the preciousness of life

Intellectually, we all know we will eventually die, that “none of us are getting out of here alive” (R Alan Wood).  Most of us, however, tend to deny or repress our feelings about this knowledge. We tend to deny our feelings about our OWN death far more than that of someone else-particularly someone we don’t know. Although we see death all around us (our TV programs, movies fiction and non-fiction probably depict more murder and mayhem than any mass culture in human history), we  trick ourselves into thinking we will somehow be spared everyone else’s fate.

Sometimes though, our own mortality stares us right in the face.

Like last year when Mike, my running coach and long-time role model for healthy living, called to tell me he had cancer and died two weeks later. Since he died, my runs have been different– flavored with a growing awareness of the inevitability of my own death as well as with an increased appreciation for the joy of running.

Or like thirteen years ago today when our country experienced a series of coordinated terror attacks in New York City and Washington DC that killed almost 3,000 people, including more than 400 police officers and firefighters. These 9/11 attacks resulted in extensive death and destruction which created for most of us,  a heightened awareness of our own mortality.

In his book, In the Wake of 9/11; The Psychology of Terror, Dr. Sheldon Solomon describes the role that death awareness can have in our lives:

“To recognize that you are finite and not particularly pleased by that prospect, is to momentarily divest yourself of all the culturally and interpersonally constructed delusions and fantasy bonds that have sustained you for your whole life. And you can’t do that without momentarily, psychologically speaking, dangling on the precipice of oblivion. But then and only then can that real kennel of who and what you are begin to emerge and that’s when we’re going to see people, myself included, at their best.”

At least three basic suggestions can be made on how to cultivate a life-affirming death awareness:

1. Pay attention to your feelings. Be aware when sad feelings about your death arise. When they do, don’t push them away. Feel them deeply and see where they take you.
2. When you’re feeling sad about the fact that you will eventually die, make a conscious effort to transform your thinking into an experience that improves your life.
3. When death naturally arises in your life, for example due to the impending death of a loved one or being exposed to death through the media, movie or book,  try to see the experience partly as as an opportunity to experience anew the preciousness of life.

Challenge: Set aside at least 20-30 minutes to write a eulogy that you would like to have read at your funeral.