Finite

Illustration by Michael S. Helfenbein

In a social media world that vacillates between endless positivity and bottomless outrage, I hesitate to share my recent reflections on mortality.

If you’ve known me for a while, you know that I’m a bright side of life type of guy. This has not changed. I make it a point to see goodness, seek beauty and cultivate joy.

I also grew up Catholic (no longer practicing). And yesterday was Ash Wednesday. This year’s beginning of Lent coincides with my more recent contemplations of our finitude. Of the irrevocable fact that our lives end. Sometimes tragically, and unexpectedly.

Priests all over the world mark the foreheads of the faithful and admonish them with these words:

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

The Buddhists have a practice of meditating on one's own death. And one of the five remembrances of Buddhism is: “I am of the nature to die, I cannot escape death.”

I just finished reading “Four Thousand Weeks, Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Berkeman, and it is a life-changing book.

Berkeman pierces through the great illusion behind the productivity, optimization and getting things done industry. Instead, he shows us how contemplating our finitude, holding the awareness of our own death, has the counterintuitive effect of making us feel more alive. It allows us to get out from under the logic of postponement that shapes so much of our lives. 

We fall into the trap of “waiting for the day when…” we can leave the bad job, retire, finally get on top of our health, become enlightened, elect the right people, have a revolution, etc.

There is too much waiting to live. And if we keep waiting, we risk dying without ever truly living.

The 12 Step Tradition encourages us to live “Life on Life’s Terms.” These are terms that include death and unexpected tragedy. They include injustice, the war of aggression against Ukraine, the irrevocable facts of climate change.

Accepting the terms does not mean we take no action. It means moving from a sober place. A place that values life for what it is, here and now. A place that is less about striving and achievement and more about relationship, meaning and the practice of fulfillment.

It is a stance that Viktor Frankl referred to as “tragic optimism,” a saying “yes” to life in the face of its tragic elements. This coming to terms with our finitude, as with the inevitability of grief, is a profound gateway to wisdom, and to the power that comes with true wisdom.

There is an undercurrent of resentment in the politics and polarization of our day. Resentment makes people bitter. It makes us small, it shuts us out of life. I believe that there is something unseen and unconscious underneath all of this resentment. I think we are using ideology and culture war to cover up a deeper and more primal anger at the terms of life itself.

I think we are afraid that living life on life’s terms means being passive in the face of injustice. But I am coming to understand that this coming to terms with life, and with the tragedy of it, actually opens us up to its goodness. 

There is freedom and wisdom in this goodness. And it is a goodness that overflows with compassion. Compassion demands right action on behalf of those who suffer. But it is action that gives of itself, it is rich with meaning, and free of resentment.

It is an action that will not wait to live life later, when all problems are resolved.

It is the action in alignment with life.