Recent extenuating circumstances in my life have had an effect on my capacity for writing, but I have finally regained space in my mind that can be lent to contemplations of obscure dilemmas, mysteries and images; the fruits of which contemplations will be rendered in text here on Orbis Tertius before long. In the meantime, please enjoy this post from The Archives—it’s one of my favorites.
[March 5, 2023]
I will die; I will possibly die of old age, satisfied and expectant (or not), but also I will possibly die prematurely, surprised by an accident or an illness. I can’t know what the conditions of my death will be, but I can know that it will be. Perhaps I am dead as you are reading this—that much is possible. If so:
Remember that your suffering for my death, if you are in fact suffering, is not about me. It is about you. It is your thing; it belongs to you. And this is good. Make your suffering about you and not about me. Recognize the goodness of your suffering; its loftiness, its importance. Your suffering is an important part of the world. Know that, through your own experience, you are contributing to something crucial to human existence, and let go of any aversion to it.
Consider that perhaps you do not need to believe in some form of existence beyond death for life to have meaning. In fact, I suggest that the exact opposite may be true. It is precisely because life is all there is that it is meaningful—this existence, your glimpse.
So do not believe that I am in a better place, or any place at all. Know that my condition has been eliminated. I am as I was before I was born. But even that is incoherent; in matter of fact I am as nothing at all. I am without experience, without suffering and without joy. I am not. My existence as an object in your world and my experience as a subject in my own world were both glimpses, spaces between infinities of oblivion, and it is the space that is significant, not the boundaries around it in time, at least for me, because there is nothing for me on the outside of the boundaries, and in fact there are no boundaries at all, only the glimpse. Know that I cherished my glimpse as best as I could, I loved it and I valued it, but I did not do so perfectly, and in fact there was significant room for improvement in this area, and this my only regret, and it is the only true regret, really; the only regret that a person could ever really have. It is a good regret. I ask you to look at your life with this same regret, to feel the same longing for experience and connection that one would feel at the end of their life. Manifest this regret as best you can, and turn it into an intention. Make an intention to connect with your experience as closely as you can, and carry this intention with you always. Carry it with you as you wake up and brush your teeth, as you put away your laundry, as you get up from your desk and you wash the dishes, as you eat and drink and speak, as you hold someone in your arms and as you breathe.
I must say, I find the standard practices of embalming and burial morbid and unsettling. I hate the thought of someone I love looking into a casket, expecting to see my face, and instead seeing something that looks more like a wax sculpture. The whole thing, to me, feels like a cruel trick. A person is promised that there will be something left of me in the world after my death, something upon which they may look and reflect and consolidate their grief, something which is ostensibly me, but instead all they get is an eerie reminder that what is really me is really truly gone. I would prefer if you refrained from referring to that thing as “he” or “him” (meaning me—as in: “he looks so peaceful,” or “I would like to see him,” or “I visit him every week;” these things are impossible). I think it must be more of an it and frankly I don’t see how it’s at all relevant to me anymore.
I think it would be good to try to recognize people for what they actually are—and what a person actually is is definitely not that thing that will remain after they are gone, that thing you see walking and shaking your hand and speaking and what not. What a person actually is is a glimpse, a world of experience; wholly other from yours, but equally rich and fraught, equally infinite and equally confined.
If you look backwards you can see something that, like death, we often choose to ignore: all that has already happened is well and truly gone. It has all been utterly destroyed, and this destruction is constantly chasing you, grabbing at you, in fact destroying you. It does you no good to turn away from it and pretend it’s not there, destroying you and the entire world every moment.
Because nothing is permanent. As I will have died, so will you, and everyone you know. But this is only meager human impermanence. There are larger impermanences. Cultural impermanences, societal impermanences, celestial impermanences. Because eventually I will die again, as these notes and all other objects of my life are consumed by entropy, one way or another, and every lasting memory or consideration of me ceases. And everything you concern yourself with will wear and disintegrate in the same way. And eventually the earth will die, and the sun, and the maw of entropy will even in fact consume the entire universe. This is not to say that it would be a mistake to ever concern yourself with anything. But how does it change your concern if you keep the fact of impermanence at the forefront of your awareness?
Is everything I am saying here true? Bah. Truth evaporates with everything else. Do not read these notes as instruction. Read them as experience, for that is the only thing that is.
Does it seem dramatic to write these notes while I am still alive, or while I do not expect to die? But, of course, what other time do I have? I’m supposed to wait until death is certain? But it is already certain. I’m supposed to wait until it is already near, already visible? But I can already see it; it is already nearer than anything else. It is already inside of me. The fact of it is true by the fact of my being alive. To wait is to wait until it is too late. The only real difference, the only choice you have, is whether to look at it or not. Consider these notes an exercise in looking at it.
Recognize that these notes (and all writings, or at least all of my writings) are an attempt to defeat death—to exert influence on the world after I’ve died, i.e., to be immortal, or rather to be less rigidly mortal—and to solve death: to characterize it and to repackage and rephrase it so that it is not so much of a problem, so that it may be something poignant and necessary and good. Because, like all of us, I suffer from the fundamental human burden which is the knowledge of death. I suffer from this burden and in many ways I am incapable of overcoming it, except in this one way: the way in which these notes are being read, in death, in that I have died, and so I am done for, and so I have been released from all problems, and everything.