Fearing Death (1)

The frequency with which one experiences anxiety about his mortality seems to be -- at least in my case -- counter-proportional to the frequency with which one experiences happiness.

When I was younger I was frequently unhappy: in part because my economic condition obliged me to waste untold swathes of time on things which made me miserable -- such as gainful employment or living in substandard housing, in ugly cities, in bad climate; but also in part, because as an European, I suffered from the European disease of unhappiness: this consists in either not realizing that great and noble ideas do not lead to happiness; or realizing it and yet willfully preferring great ideas over one's own happiness; or both. So I lived in ugly cities, wore indifferent clothes, ate tasteless food, and worried about the Bolsheviks or high culture or moral principles instead of pleasure; a better recipe for misery would be difficult to concoct.

Throughout this period I frequently thought about my death. I did not exactly fear death itself having intuited, even before I read it, Epicure's argument that where we are, there is no death, and where there is death we are no more. But I was loath to let go of this miserable life; I told myself that I needed to make something of it before it ran out. That overwhelming sense that life was running out is your clue: an unhappy person worries about dying because he is afraid that life will end before he or she has had the opportunity to be happy.

As I neared my retirement I became obsessed with the thought that I might be accidentally killed by a bus when crossing the street and what a waste that would be if I were to die before I reached the goal and managed to retire (and finally live the life I had always wanted). Of course that was nonsense: my life then consisted of nothing but hateful, stupid, endless work, under very heavy stress; it was a life not worth living; a well aimed blow of a bus would have been an act of mercy.

Paradoxically, now that I am retired and live an interesting life in pretty places in a state of more or less constant contentment, I never think of death, and I certainly do not fear it. Even though I should, since now I actually do stand something to lose. Yet, I appear to think that I have had my happiness; whether this happy state continues simply does not seem to matter. I am ready to go anytime. Perhaps because having been so intensely happy for so long, I do not have the sense that I have wasted my life.

Or perhaps because so few things seem matter at all now. Is it going to rain? Well, I'll go to a museum. Has Miss so-and-so decided to stand me up? Well, no one will prevent me from reading a book this afternoon then. The world stock markets are collapsing? Let them. Early retirement insulates you from the world so effectively that the world simply stops to matter.

This is most curious: why should the unhappy fear death and the happy not? Perhaps fear of death really is no such thing at all; no more than a name we put on the cumulative frustrations of an unhappy life. Perhaps the fear of death is really not the fear that our life will end, but fear that our life will never get better.