From Adversary To Ally

My biggest fear is my body failing me. I fear that one day an organ will stop doing what it's supposed to do and I will require an operation to repair it, or worse, daily medication to deal with it. It is not something I think about all the time, but it's a very deep seated fear and it's always there. I think at some level I am deeply in denial about my own mortality. I fear ageing and becoming worn out. I fear becoming weak and dependent. I fear having to rely on the goodwill of others to live. It is not so much a fear of death as it is the idea of growing old that terrifies me. And I think I believe that by staying fit and healthy, I can stave off bodily deterioration and ultimately death itself. Fear can be a powerful motivational tool you know. And combined with delusion, highly potent!

But the more I dwell on the subject of death, the more I realize that there is nothing to be afraid of. It is simply another step, in perhaps a longer journey. Perhaps I will meet the creator of the universe, or be reborn. Or perhaps I will simply cease to be. I think the latter to be the most likely outcome, but my explorations of the Gita and other religious texts may one day change my opinion. Who knows? Regardless of the outcome though, it seems silly and pointless to fear something that is inevitable and entirely unavoidable. So I have decided to stop doing it. I will fear death no more. I will embrace it wholeheartedly and use it to remind myself that today is all the time I really have in this world.

A colleague was once telling me about his conversation with an able bodied old man who was well into his nineties and had seen the death of his wife and one child (both of natural causes). He said to him "Bohot jee liya hai humnein. Ab to hum bhi marna chahte hai."! The comment was not made in grief, but sheer fatigue and a loss of interest in living. Imagine that. Someone at the opposite end of the spectrum from me. Someone who has lived to a ripe old age and is now bored of living. As the character of Morgan Freeman says in the Shawshank Redemption, "Get busy living. Or get busy dying.".

The most fascinating aspect of this exercise is that once you stop fearing death, most other fears in life disappear. The fear of rejection, of failure, of loss and disrepute all seem almost inconsequential in comparison. As the late Steve Jobs said, "Thinking about my death was the most powerful tool to motivate myself". Perhaps we need to accept death, before we can truly start to live. So here is a toast to life, and to living it to the fullest without irrational fears keeping us bound down.

In the immortal words of H.W Longfellow, taken from A Psalm of Life.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate.
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.