The End of an Eternal Life

I ask myself, what am I to do about the fact of my inevitable death. Shouldn't I make my life make sense in light of that fundamental fact? Live in a way that is commensurate with the greater picture of reality, rather than a fragmented shard of desires that at some point reaches its aim and has to say, "Ah yes, but you've forgotten the next thing"? Seems rather dull, doesn't it: Alive for all this time, perhaps in nothing but suffering, or striving each day to meet some distant or not too distant goal, build something, keep something, earn something; yet всё равно all the same in the end to close the book to it all and turn around, "Now, for something completely different."

The Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. There are many potential interpretations of that phrase. I myself believe probably six. One goes like this: God is Creation, put simply. The fact of your being here. Simultaneously, then, He is the fact that you're face with the end of the life you've been given. Fear of God is not so much the fear of death, so much as feeling for the fact of death. A fear of what it means. The fear of death that, consciously recognized, grappled with, says, "Now just what exactly does this mean?" The fear of death is quietly remarkably similar to the fear of what to do about life, given death. I've often thought that if one sits themselves within good answers to that question, what to do with one's life given the fact of death, that that appears in some ways or others to actually alleviate that felt sense of dread. It'll happen either way. Whether you've thought about it or not, this charade will come to a close and the infinite will close up shop on this. Like they say in Russian, one day you will "wind your fishing rod" (leave, scram), and it'll stay that way.

I've even thought that if I live fully now, by the time I am old I will have earned the felt sense that I was ready and willing to die. Are we really living a full life simply to placate our feelings by the time we approach its end? Is all this frightful adventuring just a trade so that for some short time at the end of my life I can feel a release from the fear of death, now then saying to myself, "I am ready, because I have nothing left I need to live"? Or is it to enjoy the gift that’s been given us, properly understood, as we live it? If life had no end, we couldn’t go all in on anything, which would not be much of life. The revelation of Christ—of sanity through changing one's mind using understanding of our nature—fixed our fallenness, giving us a life that is truly life... Yet we still die. We realized the beauty, the harmony of the spheres, and found a way to live such that we could wish it forever, all the same to be pulled towards its end, now perhaps less desired than ever. Kind of sick, Christ, isn’t it? "What awaits man is maggots and worms"—but "what a man needs is the wet kiss of death." People are cut short into mist.

It seems rather dishonest or at least profoundly foolish to live a life, within a map of the world, of what's valuable, of what's worth pursuing, focusing on, that conveniently or helplessly lays aside the question of death. I go to the store to get bread. Why? To eat a meal. Why? On and on the question "Why?" can be used like a psychological scalpel to induce a shift in scope. We aim, most of the time, at rather proximal things. But we nest those proximal aims within hierarchies of understanding and pursuit, whereby what I do now serves some larger purpose, whereby what I do know is believed to serve a higher, more abstract or eternal goal, virtue, beauty, safety, itself believed to be more valuable than what we have given up to attain it. What I pursue now becomes the story of what I have done. Ultimately we hope to pursue the Good, in some sense, with our basic goals. Where am I going? A happy family! Yes, yes... Why? Not to ask whether that's valuable, but rather: Where does that lead afterwards? You will die. That's where you're going, and no amount of pursuit in any other direction will prevent it. If a man aims to build a house, and jumps in the ocean, you would call him unwell, yet, it would seem, you intend to die, and spend your time... with what? Something that makes sense with that?

I am certainly coming off quite fatalistic up till now, which is not my point, not at all. I do not mean, "What is the point, just end it now!" Not in the slightest. I mean: a well-integrated psyche, a personality capable of sanity and enthusiasm, makes sense among its parts. You must eat in a way that does not interfere with work, as work provides means to eat. If you've become convinced others hate you because you repress your hate for yourself, you might then seek neurotically to gain their approval. Fine. But if your method of seeking causes others to dislike in ways they otherwise wouldn't: the jig is up, do not pass Go, you've reached a dead end. When parts of you conflict, you are confused, wasteful, or unmotivated, disconnected from others about as much as from yourself. You tell yourself something is important, yet another part of you is rather unconvinced. To convince that part—to live fully—you must sort out the unclarity or contradiction at the root of your aims. Is it really important? Are you willing to formulate the argument against that, and consider it honestly? Have you thought through where that leads? How well do you know that? By what evidence have we come to these conclusions? The Devil is in the details.

My point is that no formulation of the Good or the Ideal person, the good life, God's will, the light of consciousness in the world, the SON OF MAN, to which we implicitly aspire and orient all goals subordinate and behaviors employed in our lives, can be complete, can work throughout the body and mind in totality, without contradiction, farce, objection or doubt from within, unless it makes sense of all the facts at hand, whether admitted or willfully hidden from oneself, including the fact of the inevitability of Death. To flesh out an understanding, integrated with that fact, of what we should aim at means living in a way that reflects admitting to and accepting the reality of your Death, and formulating some kind of life that... At very least is willing to be given up at the end.

You have time here on earth, to do with what you will. With the revelation of Christ, what would have been a life of confusion and progressive insanity, can be continually redeemed, sanctified, perhaps even build towards some as of yet greater and greater character—a river of living water, grasping snakes with bare hands, charismatic and complete, judicious and insightful—dead within a century. Lost to the heap. Even if better than them all, no one will keep the score.

The continual problems of life transformed into a fruitful pursuit of truth, insanity turned inside out into new and firmer bedrock of wisdom, living turned into a bliss by wisdom of the transcendent, heart afire—an eternal life, which nevertheless comes to an end.

I cannot say what makes sense of that death, except that without the evanescent nature of life it would be incapable of depth. It's not much consolation. Though it does seem to me that living deeply and intensely makes the most sense, given that life is not eternal.

Live for life.