I’ve been thinking lately about a line from one of my favourite movies, When Harry Met Sally.
Harry: Of course not. You’re too busy being happy. Do you ever think about death?
Sally: Yes.
Harry: Sure you do. A fleeting thought that drifts in and out of the transom of your mind. I spend hours, I spend days…
Sally: – and you think this makes you a better person?
Harry: Look, when the shit comes down, I’m gonna be prepared and you’re not, that’s all I’m saying.
Sally: And in the meantime, you’re gonna ruin your whole life waiting for it.
Harry thinks that obsessing over death will somehow make him more prepared for it, but I’m not so sure. I’ve thought about death a lot over the years—and yet, I don’t think I’m any closer to being prepared for it than Sally is.
The truth is, my life is amazing. It feels such a privilege to be alive that the idea of losing it would be unbearable, no matter how much I think about it—I doubt any of the time I’ve spent contemplating death would make it any easier.
With that said, here are my thoughts which, despite seeming persuasive, do not make me feel any better about the prospect of eventually dying.
- More than 90% of all humans who ever lived are already dead.
- I was non-existent for billions of years already
- Whether I die at 40, 60, 80, 100 or 120, my death is guaranteed and from the perspective of someone in 2500, the delta between living to 40 or 120 won’t really matter
- I already deal with consciousness gaps all the time when I sleep – dying starts out no different, you just don’t wake up at the end (and when you’re sleeping, you never actually know you’ll wake up until you do)
- All the physical stuff making up my body gets replaced in roughly a 7-10 year cycle anyway, so in some sense “I” have already died multiple times
- The atoms making up “me” have existed since the beginning of the universe and will continue existing long after I’m gone – they’re just briefly arranged in my current pattern
- I’m not even really one person – I’m just a collection of different body parts and mental processes working together
- I don’t have a fixed identity – the “me” 20 years from now will basically be a different person
- At a different vantage point in space-time, I’m already dead
- As someone curious about everything and a lover of novelty, when I die, I will finally get to learn what happens after death—one of the most significant unknowns, and I’m sure it will be a fascinating novel thing to experience.
- The universe is fuckign huge and I am tiny. In any cosmic scale, I do not matter.
- I don’t want to live to be 10,000 years old anyway, so really, I do “want to die” and it’s just a matter of choosing the “right” time and not an actual opposition to the idea of dying.
I always found Parfit’s argument on personal identity (which I basically accept as correct) to provide the opposite of the comfort he described around thinking about his own death.
I have always taken it to mean that “I” in the sense of the person writing this reply will be dead and gone in a few short years, much less time than is commonly accepted as a lifetime. And that my teenage self or myself from my 20s are also already dead and that their thoughts and experiences of the world are essentially lost to time.
This line of thinking gives me no comfort whatsoever. It seems like a tragedy. But I accept it’s true.