The Happiness Myth_ An Expose - Jennifer Hecht [34]
Knowledge of death makes us human, and great knowledge of death can make us great humans. Still, I cannot help but agree with Montaigne that there is also the possibility of too much exposure to death, and too much acceptance of death. For some of us, it is hard enough to get our cleats into life. Remembering death is like switching to skates. The only historically defensible conclusion is this: Life does not seem like it is going to end. It is, though, and for your own happiness, you have to train yourself to accept it and keep it in mind. Only if you can cozy up to this peculiar fact can you be mature and happy, because otherwise you will be in worse trouble than normal if someone close to you dies; also because death lends life a gravitas and a sweetness; and finally, because the work of denying death will keep you as busy as a full-time job. But once you school yourself in the awareness and acceptance of death, you have to try to forget it again. Consciousness of death makes it too hard to invest effort in the present or the future. With knowledge of the sun’s eventual expansion and absorption of the earth, the future is not what it once was. I am joking, as no one really needed science to get to nihilism. Over two thousand years ago, Koheleth said that everyone is forgotten. Want to know how forgotten we will be? I know you know all four of your grandparent’s names, and that you may love them, and see them as your connection to your family’s past. Good. Now list the names of your grandparents’ mothers. I casually surveyed a bevy of Americans of greatly varied ages, and only a tiny minority could name even two or three of their four great-grandmothers. These are the mothers of people you have loved, spent days with, and possibly mourned. Koheleth was right. We are not going to be remembered.
Once we learn to remember death, how can we care about the future? The answer turns out to be romantic and moral; it is about our children most of all, but not only. Could I abide it if, after my death, someone burned the New York Public Library? I work my way back into existence from there. You want to be able to work your way back. Again, the way out of this happiness trap is to teach yourself to remember death, a long and laborious process, and then, though it will be almost as difficult, teach yourself to forget death again. As with controlling desire, remember that the Buddha said his method was a raft you use to get to the other side of the river; once you have gotten where you needed to go, you can stop doing the practice. Make yourself face death and become familiar with it. Effect within yourself a transformation. Seek out a state of posttraumatic bliss. But once you have done that, you have to firmly guide your attention back to life. Don’t justify life and help it stand up to the paradoxes posed by eternity. Just walk your mind away from the dark edge of the beautiful springtime field and into its lovely center. Search a clover patch for a sprout with extra leaves, or roll over and look at the cloud-scattered sky.
Any time is all time. As he lay dying, the Buddha told his students not to grieve. He explained, “If I were to live in the world for a whole eon, my association with you would still come to an end, since a meeting with no parting is an impossibility.”4 Also know that Seneca tried to stop Nero from killing his rivals by telling him, “No matter how many you slay, you cannot kill your successor.” Someone is coming, because, sooner or later, we are going.
Listen to our very motivated Shaw again: “Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”5 Of course, he’s arguing with Shakespeare, through Hamlet. Hamlet sighed that life was so short we almost might as well extinguish it now, that it hardly mattered. “Out, out brief candle.” The secret to the whole play is that his father’s death, and the idea of killing to avenge it, have made death actual to him. He knows