Death in Doses
The truth is, most people are decent and are just trying to get by. But they are also oblivious to the harsh facts that build the foundation of their existence. Mired in their oblivion, they miss out on the fullness of their existence while too acutely fearing its end.
Conventional wisdom leads these folks down established tracks; go to school, get a job, get a partner, pop out some kids. It’s not a bad path. At least most of the time it’s not too unpleasant. And unless a person chooses a job that deals with the nasty parts of life — farming, sanitation, medicine, etc. — they are lulled into a pattern of flipping on light switches and just expecting them to work. The pattern is one of cellophane wrapped comfort, accented by meat on trays, and the pursuit of more comfort still. The apparent, but only partial reality:
The universe extends barely beyond humanity and exists between a warm home, a paved roadway, and a series of well-lit stores that supplant the necessity of creation and destruction.
As the writer, Robert Greene, put it, “Most people pass through life without witnessing what happens.” Life is replaced by comfort.
But eventually something happens.
That indiscriminate something could be a birthday. It could be a crisis. It could be a reminder that the world isn’t as kind as previously believed. A death. The lull is disrupted. Life, and its actualities, pierces the veil of comfort and hits a person with an unpleasant reminder: they’re going to die.
Each person responds differently to the sudden awareness. But most fall within the spectrum of typical responses: panic, depression, recommitment, re-creation, resignation. Manifestations include the mid-life crisis (won’t the timeline extend if I reinvent myself as youthful), nihilistic withdrawal (what’s it all worth, anyway?), and panicked anxiety (how much time do I have left?).
It’s lack of exposure that drives us to these manifestations of fear. Like the darkness of that which we don’t understand. Then when awareness hits, we aren’t prepared for it. Our psyche’s run wild with the possibilities of our identity’s dissolution into eternity. It reminds me of a lyric from the metal band, Gojira. “I’m of this kind that kills all day. But yet I don’t know how to die.”
We kill time. We kill potential. We kill connection. And these acts of killing isolate us from ourselves. They isolate us from life. Our comfort isolates us from reality. In isolation we become afraid.
In ditching conventionality and reengaging with the ugly truths of life we can overcome — at least partly — our modern segregation from wholly being human. It can alleviate the fear.
Throughout the year I experience death. I do the killing. Not in the metaphorical sense discussed above, but literally. I hunt and I kill animals for food. Each time I kill, I grieve. I feel anguish. I feel sadness.
It’s reasonable to ask: what are you grieving for?
The animals I kill are wild, and though sometimes I observe them for months at a time, I have no personal connection to them. These are not pets. These are not even stock animals that I feed and shelter up until slaughter. But they are no less alive than a pet or livestock up until the moment that I kill them. Maybe they are more so alive. I believe that it’s life that I grieve for. And I experience a small quantity of my own death with every life that I take.
Our humancentric, self-centered lens on the world blinds us to the fact that there is not just our life, something that we “own.” There is life, and we are all a part of it. No matter what creature comforts we fill our homes with, we cannot escape that we are a part of a swirling mess of ugliness, beauty, light, brutality, grace, love, hate, justice, injustice, and death. Although, we do our best to ignore the ugly parts by leaving our trash out one day per week for someone else to pick up; by letting someone else do the dirty work that feeds us; by shuffling off our dead to the funeral parlor — not seeing them again until they are made up to appear living. But it is the ugly parts that connect us to living; that prepare us for that something.
In regularly killing, in witnessing death, I see more clearly the unkind realities of life. All lives end, and most of them unpleasantly. I find meaning with that clarity. I take responsibility for ugliness while accepting it as necessary. In taking that responsibility, I connect to all parts of human life — not just the “higher” aspects that make us believe that humans are separate from the rest of the animals. And with that connection, I live more fully. In acknowledging ugliness, I accept death. Finding that acceptance allows me to see a deeper beauty in existence.
Selfishly, I am grateful for the small deaths that I suffer every time that I kill. I mind life. I mind my own mortality. I am reminded to live fully — now. As I kill, I experience death in doses. Each death brings me a little of my own and I grow more aware. With that awareness I ask the questions that keep me living; why am I here? What am I doing? What’s actually important? Meaning and purpose become the drivers of my individual existence. Arthur Schopenhauer put it poetically when he said, “Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy.” Red from The Shawshank Redemption put it more simply when he said, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
But if we are ignorant to reality, we will live poorly and die even worse because we aren’t fortified by the truth. Then anxiety, rather than acceptance, takes the helm and guides. Too far removed from life and its cornucopia of experience, we’re struck by the realization that we’ve wasted so much time. Regret becomes us. We resign to lives of quiet desperation. These choices are far too common. But we don’t have to sit quietly, waiting to die.
There is no total escape from the fear of death. Search the annals of all peoples from all time periods and you will find examples of superstitions developed to soften the effect of death’s unknowns. But if we live in a way that exposes us to all parts of life, or at least a bit of the unpleasantness, death takes its natural place in our existence — and we protest it less. Hunting is my way of accepting the harsh facts of existence. It may not work for you. You may have to find another route to clarity. But suffering death in doses transforms me from witness to actor. Life rewards me — I live fully. Ugliness gives me beauty.
