I’m not sure how it is for everyone, but I know that for me death is a kind of release from life – relief, rest, peace. Release from suffering, release from being an a$$hole, release from expectations and relations. And yet…unless one believes we have souls and the like (I don’t believe we do personally), there is literally nothing there. Which is kind of paradoxical, because I always imagine myself feeling something after death. Something like peace. I guess I project my lived emotions onto the concept of a conscious and feeling self in the “afterlife” when in reality no such self can exist. In fact whenever I think about it, I cannot imagine being dead any other way. Which doesn’t stop me wanting it, mind you.
But this brings me to a broader question…can humans really ever understand what and how death and non-existence are? Or are we condemned to always function within the narrow bounds of our human experience? How can we keep wanting this nothing – complete lack of awareness, compete lack of anything – if we will never get to “experience” it? Or is what we hope for those last moments of life – that space between the void and this world – and not the void itself?
addendum: I don’t mean to make this a discussion about faith, or a categorical assertion about the rightness of a certain viewpoint – I respect other viewpoints. I am just articulating my own perspective…which you certainly don’t need to agree with and which I’m not even that sure of to be honest.
2 comments
I don’t believe in souls either. All evidence suggests that whatever consciousness is, it’s fully dependent on a functioning brain and a living body. I don’t know how to think about ‘nothingness’, I just think of the colour black for some reason. I always liked how Oscar Wilde put it, ‘Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace.’
I read your post the other day about almost jumping from a bridge. I had a very similar experience recently. Life since feels meaningless. I was about to write a rambling comment on it like I’m doing now but your post disappeared. Anyway, it’s good to see your still alive, even if you don’t wanna be.
Yeah black / lack of light often comes to mind. Complete sensory deprivation – no sound, no color, no nothing. I guess that’s as close as we’ll ever get to imagining it.
Still it’s just so strange…because when you are dead, well…you cease to exist. To experience. We can never really *know* death. We can only know dying.
Wilde’s description almost seems too beautiful. But that is how I’d want it to feel. Like complete peace.
I’m sorry about the last post. My anxiety often gets the better of me. The things I say I almost always regret saying…as was the case there. Felt like I was complaining or being too emotional &c. Ah. Well.
I get what you mean about life feeling meaningless. Today was a bad day. As was yesterday and as will be tomorrow. I really don’t see why I should keep going. It seems like only a matter of time until I get desensitized enough to go through with it. Which should scare me….but doesn’t.
Still…I’m glad you’re still here, despite how meaningless living may seem. Sharing the meaninglessness somehow makes things feel a tiny bit more meaningful. Take care.