Death. I have been thinking about it a lot lately. Not in a troublesome way.
Please read on,
Drakeo The Rulers passing, The AstroWorld music festival, the Covid-19 pandemic, Slavery, Culture Wars on Twitter, Mass shootings, an exhausted healthcare system, a Populace with very little regard for their physical and mental health to begin with, and most sinister, the zeitgeist to be optimistic, materialistic, and quiet. I think about death a lot lately and I would argue that it's not worth worrying about but it needs to be thought about regularly. For all the misfortune that did not happen to me, I must for a second recognize the role of chance and express gratitude.
I have troubled thoughts about our showcased sedentary lifestyle. Health outcomes in the United States are very poor considering we spend more on healthcare per capita than any other nation with nothing to show for it. I imagine the health outcomes of Today for an 80-year-old perhaps are influenced heavily by the lifestyles common to the past decades and perhaps offset by the advances in medicine. Your lifestyle today is going to affect health outcomes tomorrow, so it is prudent to look at what you do today from the perspective of your future self. The death statistics are not impressive, but it is becoming ever so clear that our society's lazy lifestyles and collective capitulation to father time could not be more out of touch. A philosophy of life is counterintuitive because you, to the best of your ability and knowledge, want to heal your body today in order to live longer but you know that death could be right around the corner.
Bringing this up with my friends that one time was awkward so I never did it again. It was never really en vogue to discuss our mortality however it seems to always be in the periphery of one’s thoughts. It’s rare to forget to look left and right before you cross a busy intersection. Our Nervous Systems do not negotiate when it comes to keeping you alive. I understand that this is by definition, morbid, and it is difficult to talk about death but I have found it so valuable to frame this in a way that makes life seem short. If life is short and you truly believe that, then some really difficult but necessary decisions get put in front of you. You get the 50,000-foot view. Simultaneously you must also agree that there is no such thing as an Afterlife. This brings you to the worst-case scenario in the universe: a total existence of more or less 4000 weeks (76.7 years) if you are both above average and lucky.
The reference to death, as opposed to an afterlife, means that there will be a last time for everything and there will be many things you will not get to do. Doing everything like it’s the last time you get to do it adds a certain poignancy to the very present moment. This could underpin a way of life to make sure we get our little money's worth. I think we were hardwired to think this way but somewhere along the way we lost our way. NAS says “Life’s a Bitch, and you Die” and really there isn’t much to add. I write this because I feel the collective stress of my country reinforced by forms of Media. Life is “ absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short” but I feel like under the right perspective you’ll have enough yarn to knit a warm blanket.
Don’t waste your life. It is easy to do just that. Don’t get sedated. Don’t be sleepwalking. There is no time like today to start planting seeds. Life when understood and respected in minutes will surely put your worries into perspective. I write this because there are truly too many things you can be worried about and to each is own. When I worry I try my best to mitigate it using similar framing. If you can picture a scenario that causes you some daily stress.
If this (insert issue) can be influenced by me, then why worry about it and instead spend that hour leveraging action that I can influence.
If this (insert issue) can not be influenced by me, then why worry about it even for a second? Spend that hour enjoying in-flight entertainment.
Find love yes of course. But I would argue more for finding one’s true nature and purpose. Understand the forces that brought you into this mysterious predicament and explore what lights you up inside. This is the only way your career won’t drain you into a slow submissive retirement. Don’t confuse romantic love with your purpose, however there could be boundless synergy between mutually exclusive domains.
Take care of your body. Our Capitalistic, Materialistic, Year over Year Budget to Actual type of society could give a fuck about your Wellbeing. An article that started about having a very limited time is now touching upon health and capitalism. I still find it awesome that I can order almost any food and it will be delivered at any time within 30 minutes. The gig/wfh work economy has destroyed any hope of a routine for a large percentage of people. Admitting Recency Bias, I feel like I worked more this year than any of the last 10 and I took the last 6 weeks off. Having large communities of people without communal time is unfortunate. The feeling of Friday Nights at the Movies and Saturday Night Fever are now just nostalgia if we can do anything we want any night. Since these ideals been shattered, it becomes more and more important to create something sacred that is going to keep your body tuned up.
I suggest you visit a retirement home in the United States. Don’t visit a Rich one, but visit one on the 2nd page of the Yelp results. Those people will probably have a lot to offer you by way of advice. These guys will not bullshit you on the L’s they have taken. And I will not bullshit you that the residents will have stories to tell. Nobody wants to end up in a Retirement community where they feed you Minestrone Soup and Cranberry Juice. Every day in an American Retirement Home is an “L” You have better plans. If you have kids, you better make sure they won’t ship your ass into the dessert when you get old. And this needs to be emphasized: You don’t want somebody changing your diaper. Those days can and should be over.
Speaking of Food. Don’t eat pieces of shit for breakfast. If you have no nutrition regimen outside of a few seconds of mouth pleasure, then you will one day be used for medical research. If the money that you save by eating at Taco Bell can be put into an IRA and compounded, it may be enough money to pay the medical bills forthcoming.
The end of the year, besides our birthday, seems to be time when we are most likely to take stock. To finally finish this reflection on death I want to wish you the best life in 2022.
Oh, this gon’ be your year!
Neil
