"Death . . . "

"...comes for us all, my lords."

So says Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt's excellent play, A Man for All Seasons.

Death is a topic brought to my attention of late through its intrusion into the steady pace of irregularity in my life.  Also, I had read not long before a psychological-spiritual book addressing fear in terms of death: the author made the point that death is what we fear most, whether physical or psychological.

Fear of death can cause us to do strange things.  If you look at the fear of death in its broadest sense (including psychological death), perhaps you might even trace everything back to it.  (Forget Freud for a moment.)

How do we deal with that fear?

Well I would argue that the fear of death is not of death itself, for we do not truly understand what death is.  Indeed death may even be what we desire because it brings us to what we long for most.  Think of Hamlet:

To be, or not to be? That is the question—
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished! To die, to sleep....

Yet he is afraid of death because of what lies beyond.  Also, I would argue, because he is powerless.

Personal experience confirms for me this reality.  It is not so much a dying of self that I fear, but the feeling of powerlessness, of not being in control, of losing all that I perceive as good.

If you look around you at all the people trying desperately to seize power in their various ways, either over themselves or others, you may agree with me.  We want to feel in control.  We want to look like we have it all put together.

Yet this very need for control cuts us off from those around us.  They may fear us.  They may envy us.  It is doubtful whether they will love us.

Again I find myself facing the old theme of vulnerability.  All the paths seem to lead there these days, as if it were the Rome of human life—of the interior world.  For in choosing vulnerability, we accept our powerlessness.  We accept the pain, the ache that will not go away, our loneliness, our fear, and all the shadows that we wish the light would banish.  Then their power over us begins to fade and we realize that there is a deep undiscovered country within us, a secret cell where none can trample save if we open the gate, a sanctuary for what we treasure most.

If we flee the pain, if we flee the powerlessness, we cut ourselves off from the depths of our own hearts.  Nor can we bridge the gap to another's heart.

Only a full three-dimensional object can cast a shadow.  The flat characters of poorly-written fiction have no shadow because they are not fully human.  If we would be fully human, we must accept that shadow side, embrace it, and let it take its place in our lives.  Only then can we grow.  Only then can we be fully human—fully alive.

Ought we to fear something that makes us beautiful and whole?  In the words of Hamlet:

Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is't to leave betimes?