"In My Time of Dying"

3 questions on the idea of an afterlife

“Last Light,” via Ann Aurore on X

Dear You,

During every vacation, I hope to find at least one book that I can’t put down.

These past holidays, this was that book.

I haven’t been a Sebastian Junger reader before. He’s an excellent writer, but his usual subject matter - fishing boats, infantry combat - falls outside my customary reading zone. But this bestselling book, which I found randomly in a bookshop, tells the story of Junger’s near-death experience in a hospital. As the end came near, he was, as the book jacket says, “visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. ‘It’s okay,’ his father said. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of. I’ll take care of you.’

That was the last thing he remembered until he awoke the next day and was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived. This experience spurred Junger—a confirmed atheist raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical—to understand a scientific, philosophical, and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die.”

The book is full of fascinating details and insights, but I thought I’d share with you this paragraph — and ask what you think about some of its points.

“Dying is the most ordinary thing you will ever do but also the most radical. You will go from a living, conscious being to dust. Nothing in your life can possibly prepare you for such a transition. Like birth, dying has its own timetable and cannot be thwarted and so requires neither courage nor willingness, though both help enormously. Death annihilates us so completely that we might as well not have lived, but without death, the life we did live would be meaningless because it would never end. One of the core goals of life is survival; the other is meaning. In some ways, they are antithetical. Situations that have intense consequences are exceedingly meaningful—childbirth, combat, natural disasters—and safer situations are usually not. A round of golf is pleasant (or not)—but has very little meaning because almost nothing is at stake. In that context, adrenaline junkies are actually “meaning junkies,” and danger seekers are actually “consequence seekers.” Because death is the ultimate consequence, it’s the ultimate reality that gives us meaning.” (emphasis added by me, SC.)

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You see the three phrases I put in bold? I underlined those while I was reading. And I want to ask you about them:

*Do you agree that “without death, the life we did live would be meaningless because it would never end”? (I’ve considered this idea many times and can never decide what I think about it. It’s a deep human intuition. Yet: Would quiet, depth, beauty, not count, would love not count, in an immortal realm? Anyway, I love this quote from J.R.R. Tolkien, which seems relevant to this question: “If you really come down to any large story that interests people – holds the attention for a considerable time ... human stories are practically always about one thing, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death.”)

*Do you agree that “safer situations”—ones that don’t happen to have intense consequences—tend not to be “exceedingly meaningful”?

*And then this is not so much a question but just a really interesting idea I want to highlight - that “adrenaline junkies are actually ‘meaning junkies,’ and danger seekers are actually ‘consequence seekers’.” Your thoughts? (I’m not at all an adrenaline-junkie or danger-seeker, myself, so had never considered this before.)

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You know I always hope to hear from you, and for you to hear from each other. So, please do share your thoughts and experiences; and, if you enjoyed today’s Kindred Letter, please do share and/or subscribe!