It's Your Funeral

Imagine…

You are dead. Your life is over, there is no more work to be done, and now everything about you is past-tense. There is nothing left to the concept of “You” but what exists in others’ memories. If you have ever left a negative impression on someone, you have no chance to redeem yourself. You have hit “send” on the manuscript of your life, and it has been submitted to the editor for critique.

How would you like to be described at your funeral?

Some funerals have pastors officiating, where they read off a one-size-fits-all description of a generic decent person’s life. Some are sparsely attended, and people struggle for profound things to say about a person who really wasn’t all that profound.

Others (these are the really memorable, awe-inspiring ones) have people crowded, standing-room only in the back, waiting in a line to get up and say what a truly amazing person this was. Stories and tears flow freely as loved ones paint a picture of an individual who will live forever as a saint or a hero.

There are those people who live their whole lives to serve others, and the ones who knew them best will swear up and down that there wasn’t a selfish bone in their body. There are those who touch many, many lives, inspiring them to be the best they can be, demonstrating a life’s full potential. There are those who are the matriarchs or patriarchs of ginormous families, helping bind them together in strength and love, leaving an ongoing legacy that will never die.

It’s a question I’m asking myself these days: how do I want to be remembered?

Remember that memories erode, and eventually all that will be left of you is an abridged version, with just the most important/memorable stuff. So it’s something to ponder as the days flow past us, unceasingly… what are we doing with our time here? What will our Greatest Hits CD sound like? Any given morning you wake up, you could start composing a new song for it. You could do something huge and amazing, or start down some new path that will change things forever. All that it takes is a decision to make it happen.

I think that many (most?) of us tend to live without real purpose or direction, making decisions that are arbitrary or short-sighted. To live deliberately means to live with a big-picture sort of mindset, acting based on long-term reasoning, keeping always in mind what sort of life we want to live.

It’s so easy to just exist. It’s another thing entirely to live a life you’ll want to be remembered by.

Terrified

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself-- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance..."
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared."
-- Edward Vernon Rickenbacker


Judgment.

Commitment.

Intimacy.

Rejection.

Aloneness.

Inadequacy.

Failure.

I don't believe there is a person alive who does not experience fear. I would go so far as to say that fear is a fundamental, inescapable part of humanity. We all have our own underlying objects of terror that haunt us from the moment we wake up every morning and approach the world.

We are afraid of each other. We are afraid of ourselves. We are afraid of the world, of the future, of the past, of the present. We are afraid of misery, and we are afraid of joy.

I have this hunch that we are motivated by fear in almost everything that we do. Underlying our logical, unembarrassing reasons for the decisions we make, is a deep and pervasive terror. We choose a well-paying, soul-sucking profession because we are afraid of poverty. We stay in an unhappy relationship because we are afraid of dying alone. We present ourselves as being confident and together because we are afraid of letting others see the flawed beings we truly are.

I began this post with the FDR quote because I think it basically represents the common opinion of fear as weakness, as something to be avoided at all costs. However, as I recently started reflecting on my own intense fears, and consciously thinking about how they are motivating me to act-- or not to act-- I started wondering if fear really is the enemy.

In some cases, fear can drive us towards unconscionable acts, for instance if one is threatened or blackmailed. Other times, fear can make us cowards, keeping us from doing the hard stuff that we have to. So you won't hear me arguing that fear doesn't have the potential to hold us back.

But if you think about it from a different perspective, fear can motivate us towards incredible growth. Fear can inspire us to jump-start our lives or careers, to avoid the misery or futility of the future. Fear can clue us in to our sources of weakness and anxiety, so we can strive to conquer them.

Let me give an example: I accepted an internship for this fall working at a Residential Care Facility, where the main population will be schizophrenic patients who are unable to care for themselves. This idea terrifies me. And that is precisely why I chose it-- if I am interested in clinical psychology (which I am), the discomfort I have with working with the mentally ill is going to be a major obstacle, to say the least. So I first had to acknowledge that I was afraid. Knowing this gave me the chance to reflect and realize that I didn't have to let my fear control my actions. So I took the plunge (reactions to actually working in this internship forthcoming).

Fear, like pain and sorrow, lets us know that we are human. By analyzing what we're afraid of, we can come closer to understanding why we are the way we are, which is, I believe, one of the greatest mysteries an individual can face. Moreover, if we can pinpoint our deepest fears and determine whether they're prompting us for good or for ill, it can allow us to be more conscious agents, which is crucial.

One of the most empowering things we can come to believe is that there's nothing wrong with feeling afraid. Fear does not make you a coward. On the contrary; it gives you the opportunity to have courage.

The Paradox of "Knowing"

In my exploration of different therapies to treat depression, right away, I figured out the main problem. We live based on what our brains tell us. This is usually adaptive, as we receive input from stimuli, and act according to our brain's interpretation. But what happens when our brain is just wrong? How can we know the difference? Wandering through a library crammed with untapped knowledge, looking up at an incomprehensibly vast starry sky, hearing tales of lives completely unlike our own... it's not difficult to see evidence of how little we really know. Besides which, as little as 10 weeks of studying Intro Cognitive Psych will tell you that our brains are disturbingly fallible, even if you DON'T have a mental disorder. Predictably, it's much worse when your neural chemicals are going haywire and you're believing all sorts of awful things. But it goes against our most basic instincts to operate outside of what our brain tells us. We are not built to do this. If we can't trust our own brains, we may become basically incapacitated. But I think too much trust in our brains can lead to just as much trouble.

I observed at some point that when we were children, we were significantly less settled in our worldview, meaning we were more likely to believe what we were told. However, as we grow, we develop a repertoire of what we think we know, and orient our brains around it. As an example, when I was a young child, some kid tried to convince me that you could summon a ghoul called Bloody Mary by saying her name three times in front of a mirror. Although even at that age, I knew it was unlikely, part of me still thought it could be true, and I was super freaked out. But now, I look back with a bizarre fondness for a time when I could believe something so fantastical, when I could be frightened by something so silly. It makes me wonder, what other amazing, incredible things were we able to believe back then, but no longer can today? We dismiss things like that out of hand as being unrealistic, but we do so mostly because it doesn't fit into our worldview. What if we're limiting ourselves by trusting our imperfect knowledge?

We assimilate information based on what we already believe. And if you think about this, it really is kind of a broken system. How can we increase our awareness and understanding about the world if we're only retaining the information that makes sense with what we already know-- which is incomplete-- and dismissing the rest? This explains why people are often so resistant to accepting new ideas. We are utterly disempowered without our reservoir of knowledge, and yet, on the other hand, I'm thinking we rely on it too heavily. With imperfect knowledge from which we refuse to deviate, how can we grow? As they say, the wisest thing you can realize is that you know nothing. So perhaps it is only when we find the ability to reject what we once believed to be true-- a mighty feat unto itself-- that we can actually gain new and innovative insight.

Thoughts?

Capturing the Now

I've been thinking recently about a certain irony: we spend so much of our time capturing memories that, in some cases, we may fail to create those memories. Take vacations or parties for example. Many of us spend the entire time with a camera in hand, catching each moment as it comes. Sometimes we manufacture moments for the camera, contrived situations that do not reflect reality, but make for pleasant memories. But most importantly, rather than relishing the moment itself, and throwing ourselves with wild abandon into happiness, we constantly concern ourselves with making sure that it can be recorded properly. Why do we do this?

Personally, I fall into that category of those who are more or less obsessed with documenting everything. I find that, without keeping records of what happened, I can forget entire days, weeks, periods of my life. I can forget entire vacations, entire relationships, entire epiphanies, entire moments of pure bliss. And once they are forgotten, they are lost forever to the erosion of time. But I can't help but wonder, is this focus on record-keeping counter-productive? It's really very similar to the old debate of whether to live for the present or the future. Do we invest our time and money so as to enjoy their fruits later? Or do we not put off joy, choosing instead to pour ourselves into the here and now? What if all the effort we put into preserving for the future was put instead into living each moment to its fullest potential? Would we be happier? Would we have more moments to look back on fondly, adding color and light to the story of our past?

We have such an intense desire to preserve the present so we can enjoy it in the future. But what does it mean if we're trying so hard to capture it, that we end up letting it pass us by?