The Disappearance Of Death From Our Daily Life
Unreasonable life begins the moment death has completely disappeared from our daily life, in such a way that it becomes an alternative reality, turning into a mirage, a vague and ethereal concept. This vision is mistaken and yet, it is massively sustained by popular culture, which is at once youth-oriented, hedonistic, and disconnected from real — biological, one should say — time.
The Dangers Of A Collective Illusion
Living with the illusion that death does not exist is a risky bet for several reasons. The first is that we lose our relationship with nature, which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We therefore lose the true connection between body and spirit. If you ignore death, you think that the body ultimately does not matter, or at least you consider it only through the prism of desire, pleasure, and immediate satisfaction. Death is the end of the body, a final and logical prospect of every organic being. And in public space, death has virtually disappeared: all signs of decline or old age are hidden.
Concrete Consequences In Our Life Choices
Death is now only the subject of horror films or news. We do not see it in daily life, it is constantly hidden from us. We no longer see it in the words we use, nor in the elderly who have disappeared from the streets. These same people, let me remind you, are confined in nursing homes, hidden away from the rest of society, and they spend only a relatively marginal amount of time with others. Youth is no longer connected with other generations as before. This ignorance of death, this refusal to see it, pushes us to make wrong choices. It is like in mathematics: when we draw conclusions but one of our premises is false, the entire reasoning is distorted. Believing in the non-existence of death, or at least in its disappearance, leads us to make decisions that are not the right ones.
If you had to, for example, have a child and you thought that life is eternal and that the body can follow you ad vitam æternam, well, if you are a woman, you might be tempted to conceive your child quite late and to maximize your career capital by working a lot and refusing to have a child before forty, and by doing so, you compromise your ability to have one. How many women have found themselves sterile or unable to have a child because they had ignored this biological reality! That is just one example among many. I could also cite the case of people who finally decide not to travel, thinking they will go around the world at retirement. Well, the body being what it is, it is no longer as lively, as strong, as vigorous as before. Thousands of people have never been able to travel despite their retirement, because their body was tired, because they could not move too far from their medical center, because they had dialysis to undergo, because they had chronic problems… and so they were never able to achieve this project.
Time, A Non-Linear Resource
There is this illusion, this idea that time is infinite and that we can always catch up with it: it is false. Time is a resource that is not linear, meaning that the younger you are, the longer it seems and ultimately of little value. But the older you get, the more time compresses, the more valuable it becomes, and the more you feel it slipping through your fingers. Time is elusive by essence, and it is even more so as you age. The whole question of being able to appreciate the present time comes partly from this awareness of its non-linearity. If you are not able to appreciate time at its true value because you consider it linear, you will sooner or later pay a high price. It is much more reasonable to have an instantaneous relationship with time, so to speak: to be able to appreciate present moments as they come to you. Each moment is unique, each instant will never return.
The Urgency Of Living In The Present Moment
You probably do not know it, but the person you spoke with today may be dead tomorrow. It may therefore have been the last time you spoke to them. And so it is with everything. People die, people leave us, and if we do not live in the present moment, we miss this reality and simply pass by our own life. To be able to live life most fully, one must live in the present moment. And what does that imply? Several things.
Exercises To Reconnect With The Moment
This already implies recognizing the value of the present moment. Even if you are not yet connected to it, it is already precious to conceptualize the fact that the present moment is the one that has the most value, and you must try to adapt your life in such a way as to live it fully.
Then, there are simple exercises you can do to connect with it throughout the day. A simple but effective exercise is mindful breathing. You just need to do the following exercise:
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You inhale deeply, then hold your breath for 3 seconds. Then you exhale slowly, so that the exhalation lasts three times as long as the inhalation.
This breathing can only be conscious, because normally, natural and unconscious breathing has a fairly balanced ratio between inhalation and exhalation. Doing this exercise several times a day necessarily forces you to connect to the present moment and allows you to leave the “autopilot” mode that constantly pulls you away from these precious instants.
Another simple way to be more connected to the present and to free yourself from desire — which is the mark of dissatisfaction and constantly projects you into a future instant or elsewhere — is to cultivate gratitude. Indeed, you cannot feel envy and gratitude at the same time: these two feelings are antagonistic. In the same way, it is not possible to have a positive and a negative thought in your head at the same time.
