I stopped believing in an afterlife around the time I realised I was far more likely to end up in hell – than in heaven.
We’ve got an eye on death from the moment we start developing a consciousness.
It’s bound up in how we behave, and what we believe and how we live our lives –
There’s no escaping the subject – it’s just how we approach it that determines where the emphasis is.
Thinking about death can either ruin your life – or make it- and, after an evening contemplating the subject with Mark Vernon at the School of Life(!), I’ve decided that I’m going for the latter
A Monday night spent exploring the concept of death may sound a little macabre but I’ve been hoping that someone will be able to help me get my head around my impending demise for a while now. I seem to have expended an awful lot of my time limited life energy on the subject – and I’m sure that my eating disorder was bound up in the fear.
Whilst Mark Vernon didn’t quite take away the discomfort and, unsurprisingly, the mysteries of mortality remain beyond this realm, thinking about death did help to organise the pieces a little – and it definitely re-directed my focus back on life.
When I was lying in resus in April, with wires taped to my chest and a machine that wouldn’t stop buzzing beside my ashen faced family, I made a promise that, from then on, I would stop taking quite so many chances with my life. If (I said) I am fortunate enough to survive tonight, things will change…
The first lesson about death is that you have no control over it.
The second is that it makes life far more precious.
When you’re precariously close to the precipice, the value of life is suddenly far more striking. The contrast intensifies the experience of living: it illuminates the things that are important in life. Food – and being thin – do not fall into this category, even though they feel like the most important thing in the world when you’re battling with an eating disorder. Friends, family – and what you have contributed to the world – do.
Despite the paradox, thinking about death is the best way to start thinking about living – which is lesson number 3.
I have been terrified of death for as long as I can remember. The fear has lingered, ominously, in the background, making life much harder to deal with; tingeing pleasure with the bittersweet recognition that it is finite….
Instead of thinking about my fear, I did the very human thing of avoiding it. Whilst I was getting busy with an eating disorder, I didn’t have to think about the meaning of life. When I was worrying about calories and food and how much I weighed, I could neatly sidestep the fear that, one day
that would be it.
As with any fear, the moment you face it, it shrinks. The moment you accept that, yes, one day, that will be it, you can start enjoying life.
Providing that you’re not destroying it – which is lesson number 4: the line between life and death is easy to slip over.
The temptation to play with the risk is, perversely, probably human nature – but the odds aren’t great with an eating disorder.
Lesson number 5 means that it’s good to start recovery today…because you don’t know whether or not it will be your last.
One of the interesting points that Mark Vernon explored on Monday was that, by thinking about death, you force yourself into the present. When you can only hold on to the one moment that you are living in with any certainty, then worries about the future – and regrets about the past – dissipate –
If you’re delaying getting better until tomorrow, you might as well start now –
If you’re too busy regretting the mistakes, you won’t be able to enjoy the time that you have –
And, if you’re worrying about the future and too scared to make the changes…
We only have one life and we only live in one moment – and an eating disorder won’t make the most of it.
Tags: death, self discovery, the human head
