Death.

What really happens?

I mean it.

What really happens?

There is no escape. We know this. We work very hard not to think about it. We structure our lives not to think about it. It’s there. We know it. But, we work very hard not to think about it.

Sure, we all know it’s going to happen. We know, although we don’t like to think about it, that we are born naked and we will end naked. We are born with nothing and we take nothing with us.

Or, is that true?

I have to say that I’ve never … I mean, never … been in a dinner table conversation about what we think we’re actually facing when we die. And, I’ve been in a lot of dinner table conversations.

Why is that?

I mean, is there a bigger question? Is there a more meaningful question?

It’s the singular reality of our existence. We are going to die.

What of it?

There are only so many possibilities. We humans have thought through most of them. Perhaps there are some, in theory, we have not thought about.

One is pure dust to dust. We are purely physical entities made up of particles and energy and will return to just that. Particles and energy. No substance to speak of. Nothing distinct. We will return to the vast universe as the pieces of disassociated stardust of what we are made.

The opposite is that we are somehow far more than that. We exist as distinct and eternal beings and have a kind of substance that is more than the sum of our particles and energy.

That, of course, assumes some kind of a reality or plan that is greater than is evident on the surface.

As much as I try, I can’t escape the binary nature of this issue. It’s either one or the other. Either we are meaningless particles and energy or we are meaningful particles and energy. If the latter, that begs the question, of course.

This is a big deal if we allow it to be.

We can go through life as if this is all we are going to experience. Or, we can go through life as if it is not all we are going to experience. Maybe you think this is a small gap. I think it’s a big one.

Let’s think about it.

I like to approach questions like this from the perspective of probabilities. Two other approaches come to mind, though. One is to avoid it; not to think about it. This approach can also include the thought that the whole thing cannot be known so what’s the use, anyway? The other is to just state a belief one way or the other as an act of faith, akin to throwing up one’s hands and saying, “I guess I just believe there is (is not) an afterlife. Enough said.”

Me? I like to use the gift of reason which, for some reason, we have. Sort of like using the gift of eyesight, not available to some life forms. And, reason is a whole lot about probabilities when it comes to discerning things that remain definitively unknown.

We obviously live immersed in the realm of probabilities as few future outcomes about our lives can be discerned with absolute certainty. We live as if we’ll be alive tomorrow (this evening, an hour from now and so forth) but we cannot be absolutely sure of it. In our job lives, we live as if we will not be fired tomorrow (hopefully). We can apply this to how we live in relationships with family and friends. We assume an outcome without absolutely knowing it will come true. Our assumptions are usually based on some intrinsic sense of probabilities.

Oh, of course, probabilities are about the likeliness or odds that a thing is true. The closer to 100%, the more reliable we believe it.

If the thing we’re considering is of little or no consequence, then thinking about its related probabilities doesn’t really matter. “The odds seem about 50/50 you say? Well, I don’t really care all that much.”

But, if the thing has potentially big consequences, then it seems a bit disingenuous to just punt the question down the road.

The reason for the well-worn aphorism that there are no atheists in foxholes is that crouching, terrified, in such a place while being bombarded by high explosives will always focus one’s attention on the meaning of life. By circumstance, one just cannot avoid the fact of what could happen in the next split second. (Of course, there are atheists in foxholes but that’s not really my point here. The issue is not really one of what we believe but how, why and when we believe it.)

I am thinking right now of why we don’t talk about this more. I mean, we talk about consequential stuff all of the time. Things in the news. Big issues that mean a lot to us. Political issues. Economic issues. Cultural issues. Why is it we don’t really want to talk about death with our friends and loved ones?

I mean we know it’s there. We know it is inevitable. We see it both in the distance and up close and personal. People have all sorts of opinions on all sorts of things. I imagine most people have at least some kind of opinion on death, whether having thought it through carefully or not.

One possible answer to this lack of attention given the thing is the common perception that death is just not a good thing. It’s a dark thing. A picture of the Grim Reaper kind of thing. A thing that comes to take who we are away. And, who wants to talk about that, for goodness sakes? Who wants to spend discretionary time thinking about that when it’s, to be honest, enormously depressing.

Can you imagine it? A social gathering at a dinner party? Some spirited discussion about sports teams or immigration or whose news is fake news and you raise your voice above the din and say, “Let’s now all share our thought about death.”

Silence. Well, that didn’t go well.

What if we flipped that? What if we shoved aside our natural discomforts and took the thing head on? What if we set aside our innate uncertainties in favor of trying to think about things that we could throw into the mix of probabilities? Assuredly, most people have an opinion on this. My situation two years ago and Gary’s situation today are obviously such occasions. They also offer others around us an opportunity to think about these things, too.

What if we sloughed off the inclination to morbidness, relaxed, and played the “what if” game?

I may have more to say on this soon. Thanks for listening.