Healing Space | How to think about death

Research shows that conversations about and contemplations of death help people overcome their fears and anxieties or misconceptions about death. We all have certain beliefs and superstitions or notions of the end of life that we hold on to. These may come from religion, culture, or from experience, seeing others pass. We may hold on to myths like if a parent passed at a certain age, I will too; certain kinds of medical interventions accelerate death because we saw someone go into a surgery and not survive it. We may believe our life is hard because we are being ‘punished’ and so we will never escape our circumstances. We may cling to unprocessed emotions like grief, shame, guilt, trauma for events in our lives, and see death as the only way out. When we have lost someone dear to us, we may believe we have no right to go on living. It is important to talk about these and confront these beliefs openly and without fear of judgement in a therapeutic setting. Holding them in enables us to exoticise the notion of death, enhancing our fears and the belief that it is an escape or exit. This is why many religions encourage a contemplation of the afterlife in their own way.

So how can we contemplate death in a way that is useful to us? The answer is to contemplate it correctly. That is without exaggerating it or diminishing it. When we value death correctly, we also value life correctly. When we diminish death, we risk our life in dangerous activity. When we exaggerate death, we see it as a fantastical exit from the realities of life. Truth be told, we have all contemplated our mortality at some point. What will happen to my children, partner, parents? Do I earn enough? Will I be healthy enough? We consider death when buying insurance and making investments in a pragmatic way. However, we find it difficult to contemplate death beyond this and end up repressing our thoughts about it. The more we repress our thoughts, the more our anxieties, fears, and misconceptions have room to grow. This pragmatism carried forward helps us see that death is a normal and inevitable outcome in life. There is no one born who will not die. Death is as normal as growing taller, graduating college and as hunger, sex and birth. When we see it this way, we understand that time is anyway limited and the circumstances of our life are transitory, not lasting. We see that the resources we have in hand are precious, time, energy, health, material assets, but also, our opportunities and connections.

These contemplations can put life and death in perspective for us. While there is no known single cause for suicidal ideations, it is important to keep the conversation about death going to both destigmatize and de-exoticise it. Death may be inevitable, but for the moment we each have a rare and precious life.