January 16, 2024 • 33 mins
Since the dawn of time, philosophers have grappled with how to cope with our knowledge of death, both when it happens to loved ones and when it happens to us. In this episode, we do our best to answer this age-old question, referencing both traditional wisdom and more recent thought. Bonus content: Luke demonstrates that...
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(00:00):
It's actually repression of our knowledge of our
mortality
that is at the root of what used
to be called neurosis. Life offers up and
has potential
in every moment. Death is the end of
that potential. There's nothing more more total. I
am of the view that mere quantity
is not enough.
(00:21):
Welcome to How to be an Adult, a
podcast created by the practitioners at the Morpheus
Clinic for hypnosis in Toronto, Canada. This is
a show for people just like you who've
inadvertently become adults and don't know what to
do about it. I'm Luke Chao. And I'm
Pascal Langdell.
And whether you're 18 or 80, this is
the trail guide to life that your parents
(00:42):
didn't give you when you finally reached the
age of majority. Now, we publicize these perspectives
and these ideas
in order to democratize the kind of self
assurance,
the sense of autonomy,
and, perhaps also the sense of direction as
well, that we believe will help you to
be an adult in today's world. Today, we're
gonna talk about perhaps the greatest cause of
(01:05):
anxiety, whether we're aware of it or not,
in most people's lives. And in prior episodes,
we've claimed that when you reach adulthood, it's
the final stage. Once an adult, you're forever
an adult. But today we are actually gonna
talk about
what is beyond adulthood
which is death.
Yeah.
(01:26):
So so so so So what's nice is
you say, you talk about death and then
there's this silence, right? And that in some
ways is indicative of our attitude towards it.
It's a sort of a taboo subject that
that somebody lays down the word death and
suddenly everybody goes
And there has been scholarly work done on
the subject.
Ernest Becker,
who was Canadian or at least spent part
(01:47):
of his life in Canada,
he wrote a book which won the Pulitzer
in, I think, 1974
called The Denial of Death.
And he
iterates upon Freud's hypothesis,
which is that repressed sexuality
is what causes neurosis or anxiety
by claiming that it's actually repression of our
(02:07):
knowledge of our mortality
that is at the root of what used
to be called neurosis and which we now
call anxiety
and it's a fascinating book which I read
at the start of the pandemic and it's
definitely
informed my
views
of how I might be able to best
help people deal with anxieties of elevators,
(02:28):
fear of flying,
fear
of the unknown, fear of even social situations
like public speaking, because it seems like once
someone is able to accept their mortality, once
they're looking at it and they're
believing in it and
they're not trying to escape from it and
they're not trying to repress it, it seems
(02:50):
like there's a trickle down effect to what
you might say are lower level anxieties than
the fear of death. And do you think
this is something more of a a development
from the
results of living in a modern society where
we have antibiotics,
we have incredible technological advances,
where we get to actually be scared of
elevators because they exist.
(03:10):
Because if I think of people 200, 300,
400 years ago,
then death was ever present. You you would
have children. You would expect not all of
them would would survive.
And your own longevity
was permanently in doubt from anything from an
infected cut to, you know. Well, part of
Becker's hypothesis
is that human beings have created
(03:32):
works of art
and we've created religions and monuments like the
pyramids, for example,
to manage our terror
around our knowledge of our own mortality.
So, it's not just in recent years we
have elevators. It's also in the time of
the ancient Egyptians where,
at least according to the hypothesis,
(03:54):
we have to imagine what's beyond this life
in order to be able to cope with
our seemingly
uniquely human
ability to comprehend death. To appreciate death. Although,
I do think possibly the Egyptians could have
done with elevators. Although, there's probably somebody out
there that will prove that they invented the
elevator in the first place. Probably.
(04:15):
So, I know that between you and I,
we're very familiar with the Latin term, a
memento morae. So, can you explain a little
bit about
your take on it, first of all? Well,
the term translates, I believe, to, you know,
remember death. Remember that you will die.
What it means
is that a path to more happiness and
(04:36):
peace
is to confront the inevitable and to accept
it as
frankly
and as quickly as you can.
In other words, if repression of our knowledge
of death and dying
causes us to
be anxious,
then acceptance
of our knowledge of death and dying is
a path to being liberated from such fears.
(04:59):
There are cultures other than the Greeks
who practice this kind of philosophy of remembering
death and dying.
So, in at least some Buddhist
sects
they have the practice of corpse meditation
where, you know, rather than imagining you're in
a peaceful rain forest with waterfalls and birds
(05:19):
you imagine your own body as putrid and
decaying
because honestly on a long enough timeline who
isn't putrid and decaying
but when you're able to meditate upon it
and then to perceive it and to imagine
it to feel it and to be at
peace with it Then who cares if the
elevator could get stuck for 5 minutes before
you're rescued?
(05:40):
Right? And if you you know if you
die in a plane crash
then you still should have been on the
plane so you can take your vacation because,
like, you know, most likely you wouldn't have
done in in a plane crash. I've got
a story about that, which is, I used
to do a lot of commercials. And so,
I'd fly all around the world. And I
think one of the first commercials I did
was in Nepal. It was for Bank of
Posta. And
(06:00):
so, what I'd do is I'd do a
job and I'd stay for longer in whatever
country I was filming in
to explore the country. And so, there I
was, I was in Nepal. I thought, right,
Everest. I always wanted to see Everest. Always
wanted to
to hike up as far as I possibly
could. So, we take an airplane, and the
first airplane's a tiny little airplane.
And before we get on, we hear that
the weather's quite choppy, should we say. It's
(06:22):
a lot of wind, and it's been delayed
and delayed and delayed. It's delayed for like
8 hours. I'm thinking, well, this is a
good sign. They're looking after us. That's, you
know, it's a good sign. They're not gonna
fly because it's it's too dangerous, you know.
And, then eventually we all get on the
plane,
then the engines start, and then they stop
the plane because one of the engine isn't
working. So we all get off of that
plane, I go, oh, that's good. They're all
looking after us. It's okay. And it's perfectly
(06:43):
safe. So let me come to the next
plane and then we set off. Right? So
I'm fine. So then we go and, we're
fine for some time and it's fine, but
then we hit some turbulence.
And I've never experienced turbulence like this before
in my life. People start crying, people are
panicking.
And at one point, the aircraft
drops very very suddenly. Mhmm. And there's a
(07:04):
girl at the front who I see in
zero gravity
fly up into the air. I can see
underneath her, I can see the pilot and
it was extraordinary because I looked out the
window and I could see Everest
from
the windows
glowing.
I remember thinking,
at least I got to see Everest.
I thought if I die now, that's okay.
(07:25):
At least it's a long held dream that
I wanted to be close close to to
to seeing Everest. And so we landed and
we came out, we, you know, kissed the
ground and it was all, you know, all
celebrations.
On the flight back, I was in an
Airbus 380 or whatever it was, on some
Swiss airline
thing, and the slightest bump, I was
like
(07:45):
this. Because that acquiescence that was easier in
the moment, suddenly I was alive and then
I was very very cognizant of my mortality.
Yeah. Well,
near death experiences. So I'm gonna call that
a near death experience. I don't know how
close you were to actually, you know, hitting
the ground, but let's call it a near
death experience
they kind of have a way of giving
people a whole new perspective
(08:06):
both on the meaning of their life as
well as the the okayness
of the fact that one day they're going
to die. Yes. And perhaps the reminder that
you are perhaps able to no longer exist
easier than perhaps you think. The closest thing
I've ever had to a near death experience
was I tried to kill myself
about 12 years ago. Yeah. I can describe
(08:28):
a marked difference
between me before that near death experience
and me
after the near death experience,
where every day and every year I live
these days, I very much feel like these
are extra bonus years of my life
where it doesn't matter so much if like
(08:50):
you know I lose money in the stock
market
it doesn't matter so much if I put
out a podcast and people hate what I've
put out on the internet
because I'm still alive.
Right? So I guess that experience for me
kind of unrepressed
my knowledge of my mortality and now I'm
on the better side of things
(09:11):
where if I do die tomorrow at least
it's not I'm dying at the age of
28 or whatever it was.
At least
I've I've lived my life. I've lived past,
you know, the age of Jesus and Kurt
Cobain and Joplin and Hendrix. At at least
I've done some things with my life since
then. Mhmm.
And I am gonna die one day,
(09:32):
but that doesn't obliviate
everything I've been doing during all the days
when I am still alive.
And perhaps also,
as you say,
you have that sense of every year being
a bonus.
Perhaps sometimes when you face
those moments, it's actually
even the smallest things can be the potential
(09:53):
for joy in life. I know there's somebody
who felt like they were at the end
of their road and
was contemplating
suicide. And and, they bought some tangerines from
the local store.
And they just absentmindedly
started peeling one. And he popped the the,
tandrine or satsuma oil in and the explosion
of taste woke him up. And he he
(10:13):
remember he said he says, I remember thinking,
well at least there's this.
And that was like the smallest and it
was the reminder that actually life
offers up and has potential
in every moment. And death is the end
of that potential. There's nothing
more total for the denial of life and
death. Obviously, it's a truism.
But just as, for instance, if you have
(10:35):
somebody close to you that dies, there's something
extraordinarily profound about that absence,
which is a marked difference
in quality to somebody leaving the country or
somebody who never wants to talk to you
again and ghosts you and disappears.
The knowledge of actual death is so so
profound that I think that it's equally
(10:56):
balanced, I think, by the offering that life
has, I suppose. I think that what you
shared is a good segue
into how then do we cope with our
knowledge of death and the profound knowledge that
once someone's gone they are gone. Period.
Most of us are gonna live enough years
(11:16):
that we're gonna see other people die before
us
before then we have to cope with our
own mortality. So let's start
with how do we cope with the deaths
of others.
My most recent experience
is I I have had a very beloved
cat named Robot.
Those of our listeners who have seen my
YouTube channel or TikTok channel, they've seen Robot.
(11:38):
He's pinned up at the top there.
And he was the sweetest animal and he
got me through the pandemic. I've had him
since he was 6 months old
and he was the most consistent
source of love and warmth in my life
for the 11 years that I had him.
And toward the end of his life, I
was taking him to the vet because there
was something wrong with him, but they never
(12:00):
thought it was cancer.
Christmas Day last year, he collapsed. Within a
few hours, I had to drive up to
out of town to take him to the
closest emergency vet that was taking
new patients and then boxing day I made
the decision to put him down.
And I was sobbing and the one thing
I kept thinking
was
even a cat could do it in the
sense of being such a consistent source of
(12:22):
warmth and love and affectionate even just seeing
me,
not judging me, not letting their own wishes
or desires for me get in the way
of seeing me, but by cat,
I believed could actually see me as I
was and not just as like a food
source or something. Yeah. Obviously, I was going
through this personal experience of having to cope
with with loss
(12:44):
and over the holidays.
Here's
what got me through it, and I've started
to advise my clients of this too.
It is a disservice to those we've lost
if we remember only the final page in
the story of their lives.
Right? So I I had Robot when he
was 6 months old. That that's when I
first held him in my hands.
(13:04):
And then I brought him into where I
was living at the time, and then I
did my best to cat proof the place,
and I had to like clean up after
him when he threw up and everything for
11 whole years.
And when I remember
the 11 years of his life where we
did that kind of thing and we had
shared memories and he was that constant presence
(13:26):
in my life,
then yes,
it didn't end so well.
But it would be such a disservice
to the animal
if I only just thought about
driving up to Newmarket on Christmas Day
and looking at possibly a $20,000
surgery bill to remove the tumour.
I did everything I could to place that,
(13:49):
not to deny it, but to place it
in the context of the entire story of
his life.
And then I remembered that whatever he thought
of me while he was still on the
planet is still valid.
Whatever
views he had when he saw me so
clearly coming back from work every day,
it's still the truth about me
(14:10):
even when he's no longer present. It's not
like his views of me die with him.
It's not like the reality about me that
he brought my attention to dies with him.
It's the reality about me that he brought
my attention to is still there even when
he's gone and that's the lasting impact he
made on me. Now most of us if
everything happens in the right order are gonna
mourn our parents so that they don't have
to go through the pain of having to
(14:31):
mourn us. Mhmm. On the decades long timeline
of having been raised by them and having
them put their values into you, having them
show you how to ride a bike and
having them show you well here's how you
cook this dish
all of this is going to outlast their
time on the planet. And none of this,
none of the memories, none of the values,
none of that dies with the person.
(14:52):
You know, in in my own personal life,
I know that probably I'm gonna die before
the younger people I know will, but I
hope that I will have made an impact
that outlasts me. So my mother died in
97 from from a reasonably
sudden, well, a 3 year illness.
It's funny because for years afterwards, I couldn't
really picture
(15:12):
what it was like before she was sick
because the period of sickness was so dominating.
Obviously, it's
for kids as well, but for anybody, it's
like the sharpest of memories.
Some of them are the most persistent even
if it's the memory of driving to the
hospital looking out the window or something.
This is what somebody else remembers. In the
Harry Potter books, bear with me.
(15:34):
So in the Harry Potter books, there's this
incredible bit where Harry Potter has witnessed death
at the end of the previous book.
And off he goes to school at the
beginning of the next book.
And up till that point, they've been able
to get into horseless carriages
that pull them up to the gates of
the school from the station. No horses, just
(15:55):
these carriages. Right? But this time when he
goes, he sees these horses, these dark black
horses and he's astonished. He's quite scared by
them. And then I think it's Luna Lovegood
turns around and says, You see them, don't
you?
And he says, What do you mean? He
says, You see the horses.
I said, Yes, I do. What are they?
I don't understand. She says, Well, because you've
seen death. And Luna had also
(16:17):
seen the death, I think of her mother.
And it's When I read that, I was
like, That's just so brilliant in the sense
that
those who
do lose somebody close to them, particularly when
they're young,
it it really alters your understanding of the
world because you can you can live under
the illusion. This just goes back to mentor
Moray as well. You can live under the
(16:37):
illusion that somehow you're gonna get away with
it. That somehow
if you just sort of go, la, la,
la, it's not gonna touch you. And yet,
it will and it does.
And as the years pass, actually, I I
remember more and more about what she was
like
in the years preceding
and when I was much younger.
And that
over time, that focus on the illness, on
(17:00):
the sharp pain of the illness
has dissipated somewhat.
And I feel like there are many aspects
of my personality which I still get to
thank her for
and that I am now giving to my
kids as well. To me, that's an extraordinary
legacy. And if you think about for a
moment, if you can manage to deliver those
good memories, those good perspectives, those good feelings
(17:22):
between one generation and the other. That means
that whatever it is good that my mom
did that I can pass on to my
kids might echo down for another
6, 7 generations.
Death is not the end of somebody in
the slightest. It's the end of the house
they were living in.
But the memories of the house don't disappear.
Well, there's a saying and I've heard it
(17:44):
attributed to a number of people. I think
it's Hemingway and Banksy.
The saying is that they say you die
twice,
the first time when your body perishes
and the second time when someone says your
name for the last time.
So this is why I say that someone
like Anthony Wayne Banksy
are going to outlive their physical presence.
(18:05):
I feel like even in the limited amount
of work that I do, like, I'm not
really, like, famous, but, like, I do believe
I've made an impact over my many years
of doing what I can do to change
people's lives.
Even if I, like, get hit by a
truck tomorrow,
I will have made a lasting impact at
least among my clientele because sometimes I was
the first person to say that your self
(18:26):
love is valid.
Although I can see very clearly that there's
a clear line for you,
between your
daily job
and manifesting change in other people's lives. Right?
So, it's actually quite a clear
line. For some people it's not quite so
clear.
Some people,
they don't get the
benefits of that from their work. So in
(18:48):
some ways I look at and think well,
yes.
And
it is also true that
those moments that you spend
with your family,
with your friends,
yes, with your coworkers,
that just as that there's infinite possibility for
turning anything into a source of joy, there
(19:08):
is also infinite possibility
to be mindful
and to actually
appreciate
what is and what is now because
at any point it can go.
And and that means that other people as
well. It's not just, you know, remember you
will die is the momentum mori.
But
implicit in that is that actually remember other
(19:31):
people will die as well. It's not that
it's remember death, I think is a better
translation of the spirit of it.
One thing I say to almost all of
my clients
is that
you are clearly
a living human being. You are among the
living.
The flip side to remember death is
that currently,
(19:52):
in the present day, in the material world,
you have the spark of life.
And beyond that, when you are perceiving
the full complete
extent of it, you can see that you're
a 100% alive.
Those of us who kinda slog through our
days feeling half alive are actually completely alive,
but they've gotten distracted
from parts of it. And even in this
(20:13):
very second, if anybody's listening to this right
now, I invite you just for a moment,
force the podcast, you don't have us yassering
away, and just take a moment to focus
on your breathing, on the sense of your
blood coursing through your veins, your heart pumping,
your lungs breathing fresh air in, and and
getting rid of the air that you don't
want, and just take a moment
(20:34):
to register
just how alive you are. And because this
is available at any point in your day,
and in some ways, it's another one of
those panaceas for want of a better better
word. Sometimes people feel like when they're a
100% alive, that that that they're manic, they're
deluded,
their feet are not on the ground, but
that's actually the clear perception of your current
state.
(20:56):
Even if feeling half alive or feeling half
dead, even if it feels like the norm,
It's not actually your your current state and
even your dog or cat can see that.
There's also an equation
that is often made about
because if you say you're intrinsically alive period,
foundational,
that's it. And then you go, Well okay,
(21:17):
all right. So are there occasions
when
it is apt and right
to even pursue or to wish for death?
And let me unpack this a little bit
more because that's not what I'm saying is
the case.
I'm saying that a realist or perhaps utilitarian
would say, well, okay. What if you lost
your sense of sight, smell, taste, hearing? What
if you were totally paralyzed
(21:38):
that you could not be part of a
social community?
People are gonna have to look after you.
Mhmm. My argument would be, there is still
life whilst you are breathing, whilst there is
life inside you. This is
the difference between you and a rock. Mhmm.
Right?
However, there's also that equally there would be
people say, Well okay, there is a point
(21:59):
at which it's okay to pursue death. I
mean it's not like
the stoics were particularly shy of killing themselves.
They saw it as having a role,
that discretion. So, yeah,
what do you think about the balance between
the quality of life and
its continuance, you say? Well, I definitely disagree
(22:19):
with the view that the more quantity of
life a person has the better it is
because we don't even treat our pet animals
like this if we have an animal that's
suffering, we want to alleviate their suffering.
And we do factor in quality of life,
not just merely quantity of life. We're talking
about our pet cat or our dog. Like,
(22:39):
I would have paid for robot surgery Mhmm.
Except they told me he's probably gonna die
on the operating table because it's that hard
to operate
on. So I figured that on the balance
of
probabilities let's give him a good death. So
I was there. You know, I don't know
what everyone else was thinking when they heard
me sobbing through the door. I'm sure they
heard it before, but, you know, so I
(23:00):
was holding this paw.
In those last moments, because I took the
time to kind of like spend another hour
or 2 with him,
there was something he gave to me at
the very end
while I was sobbing.
Right? It's like he forgot his pain for
a moment. He forgot himself, and he looked
up at me with only concern for me.
(23:23):
And, you know, I had to make a
decision at some point, you know, to call
the vet in to to complete the procedure.
But he was able to give me that
before he left. And that definitely has made
an impact.
You know, I did my best to kind
of, you know, hold his paw, act like
everything's alright. The vet told me that sometimes
owners leave the room.
But it's it's I think it's an underestimation
(23:46):
of oneself
to feel like they can't handle
their presence
at their pet's passing.
I think everyone is capable of it and
those who think they can't are underestimating
themselves.
And it is worthwhile.
Difficult emotions are not necessarily in themselves something
to be avoided,
which is why we're talking about, you know,
(24:08):
confronting death, looking at it, understanding it is
gonna happen. Difficult emotions are gonna come up,
but but it's when you're able to sit
with the emotions and and feel them
that you then come to the other side
of acceptance. Mhmm.
So for humans,
I am going to put forth a claim
that I think Einstein said it's tasteless to
unnecessarily prolong life.
(24:29):
I am of the view that mere
quantity
is not enough
and that quality of life really does matter.
That I'd rather have a lot of quality
of life than just merely a lot of
quantity of life. I know that that when
my mom got sick, there were members of
her family and people who knew her who
refused to see her
(24:50):
because
it it was too they
knew she was dying and they simply were
not willing to sit in that discomfort.
I remember thinking as a kid, thinking, that's
so weird.
And that's what your story just now just
put me in mind of. Right at the
very last second,
your cat provided an immense service to you
(25:12):
and to your
life ahead by doing that, right? And man,
it can be hard. I mean,
yeah, boy, it can be hard. But I
suppose the good death is the one that
shows
how it can be done with acquiescence
and maintaining
that relationship to the love of life and
(25:34):
the love of people living.
There's something in there. There's something about that.
And yes, animals do it.
I remember my grandmother used to have this
thing where she used to sort of wiggle
my finger like this when I was a
kid. She had a stroke and she was
in this awful hospital in Barnet.
And I kept I couldn't I was much
younger at that point. I couldn't
(25:55):
fathom what was gonna happen. I said, oh,
you're gonna get up and you'll be doing
weights weights by the end of the week
kind of thing, joking, joking, tasteless jokes and
people looking at each other for going, this
is not gonna happen.
And she reached out of her hand, she
couldn't open eyes but she just grabbed my
finger and wiggled it in this in the
probably the only thing that she could have
done
to say, yeah. I I see you. I
hear you. I'm glad you're here and, Hi.
(26:15):
You know? It was
And yeah, so I look at that and
think, That was a pretty good death.
I often think of this actually. I sort
of think, Well, what do you have to
do
to prepare yourself to be the kind of
person
that can
face your own sickness
and death with equanimity?
(26:36):
What kind of person do you need to
be to acquiesce
to that and not rage, rage against the
dying of the light? Now, Dylan Thomas's
poem is brilliant because we all feel that
almost entitled rage.
How dare life be taken away from me?
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And yet, I would say,
no, don't.
You know, rage, rage with a passion for
(26:58):
life
and accept that you're gonna die.
Something else something else I advise my clients
of, and this will be true in most
of their cases, it's that if they're
25, if they're 35,
if they're 45
even,
unless they have knowledge otherwise, they don't actually
have to prepare to die tomorrow.
(27:22):
Now if someone's
75, if someone's 85, if they're lucky enough
to have reached that age, then they're gonna
be prepared
mentally and emotionally
to be thinking about
death possibly tomorrow.
You don't really have to
prepare
I guess
to be dead I mean, obviously, there is
(27:44):
memento mori. There is the corpse meditation. There
is benefit to this.
But at the same time,
I would suggest it's better preparation for tomorrow
to prepare to be living, to prepare to
live another day and to live it well
and to live it excellently.
And then if in the future you get
some diagnosis or if in the future you're
just old,
(28:04):
then,
you know, when you prepare for death at
that point, it's not a tragedy.
If after a long enough adventurous enough, well
lived enough life,
then you kick the bucket. Mhmm.
So to answer the question of how do
we kind of die an excellent death or
how do we face the inevitable
(28:25):
with dignity,
I would say that even if you don't
have an answer to how you're gonna do
it,
you're probably gonna have a long enough timeline
to figure that bit out.
I mean, if there's like no diagnosis and
you die tomorrow, you don't really have to
be prepared because it's, you know, it's it's
the truck bearing down on you or or
whatever.
(28:45):
Although perhaps
the answer is not to treat
death as
different in the sense that
if the answer to a fear of death
or if the answer
to who do you become
in order to face death well, in order
to do death well,
perhaps you've got to do life well. Perhaps
(29:06):
that's your job in fact. Is that those
same skills that you develop to do life
well, those same skills that
you use that stop you from
worrying about things that you can't control,
Stop you from holding on to baggage of
the past and therefore raging at the lost
or missed opportunities.
All those sorts of things, the things that
(29:26):
we have to deal with in everyday life.
And if you do those well, perhaps you'll
be better able to cope with the diagnosis
when it comes. Absolutely.
We're all gonna die anyway, right? That's a
reality. At some point at
some age, we're all gonna face the inevitable.
I mean, like, even if there's like this
immortality medication or whatever, eventually, like, global warming
(29:48):
is gonna kill you or the hate death
of the universe is gonna kill you. So
we're all gonna die eventually
and whether we worry about it or not,
most of us are going to reach something
resembling old age
before we die.
Which in itself, old age is gonna be
something that again, if you've equipped yourself in
(30:08):
life to
to acquiesce and self love and Yeah. And
all those, then you'll do getting old better
perhaps.
So, the the choice to make
is are you gonna become an old person
anyway
and you've not gone to Japan
and you've not written that book and you've
(30:28):
not learned how to play the ukulele
are you gonna become an old person who's
out of fear or
inhibition or anything else? You've not done all
of that or
are you gonna become old anyway
and you have done all of those things?
Because those of us who remain among the
living, we have the ability
on the whatever the timeline of our futures
(30:49):
are to then do the things such that
when we're facing the inevitable, it's not a
tragedy
if you've lived a full, rich, good life
and you kick the bucket anyway. Which also
goes back to a previous episode where we
discussed
values and living according
to those values. Because perhaps your values
are not to go to Japan. It could
be any of the multitude
(31:11):
of values that there are.
But they can also include
looking back.
Some previous generations didn't say, Yes, I managed
to bring up a family. Full stop.
Do you know what I mean?
That can be an extraordinary accomplishment in and
of itself and it may be enough for
somebody to look back on and be proud
about.
(31:31):
So
I suppose what I'm saying is that
if you look back and you've done things
that aligned with
your values
and you did the best you could to
live by them and make the most of
them, then that's a life well lived. And
perhaps that's
given you the skills to be able to
face death well.
While we remain among the living,
(31:52):
and we also know that at some point
we're gonna face the inevitable,
It is sometimes useful to make decisions through
a lens of
are you gonna regret this or not regret
this when you're on your deathbed?
Right? So there are gonna be some things
we're afraid to do
and which we're not even gonna care about
(32:14):
on our deathbed.
And there are gonna be some other things
where regardless of how that trip to Japan
goes, we are not gonna regret having gone
on that trip on our deathbed.
So if you kind of look at the
long timeline of your life and ultimately what's
really gonna matter,
that is a useful lens for deciding how
you're gonna live between now and that future
(32:36):
date.
Thank you so much for listening, and all
the way to the end. I know the
subject matter today is not as lighthearted as
some other episodes,
but lightheartedness, I would suggest,
follows from being able to handle the heavy
stuff in life.
Pascal and I are practical philosophers
in a way at the Morpheus Clinic For
(32:58):
Hypnosis. We're hypnotherapists,
but what we do for our clients is
we instill these kinds of views and perspectives
in them so that they could benefit from
our thought.
If you want to connect with us, go
to www.morphisclinic.com
and ask my team for a free consultation.
If you have enjoyed,
(33:19):
or found any of the things that we've
spoken about today have resonated with you, then
please subscribe
to us on YouTube at Morpheus Hypnosis or
anywhere you get your podcasts, Apple Podcasts or
Spotify and so on. We'll be there, and
we look forward to sharing with you our
next subject matter, which will be on
masculinity.
(33:40):
Healthy masculinity.
Go ahead and follow us. You'll be notified
of our next episode.
It's actually repression of our knowledge of our
mortality
that is at the root of what used
to be called neurosis. Life offers up and
has potential
in every moment. Death is the end of
that potential. There's nothing more more total. I
am of the view that mere quantity
is not enough.
(00:21):
Welcome to How to be an Adult, a
podcast created by the practitioners at the Morpheus
Clinic for hypnosis in Toronto, Canada. This is
a show for people just like you who've
inadvertently become adults and don't know what to
do about it. I'm Luke Chao. And I'm
Pascal Langdell.
And whether you're 18 or 80, this is
the trail guide to life that your parents
(00:42):
didn't give you when you finally reached the
age of majority. Now, we publicize these perspectives
and these ideas
in order to democratize the kind of self
assurance,
the sense of autonomy,
and, perhaps also the sense of direction as
well, that we believe will help you to
be an adult in today's world. Today, we're
gonna talk about perhaps the greatest cause of
(01:05):
anxiety, whether we're aware of it or not,
in most people's lives. And in prior episodes,
we've claimed that when you reach adulthood, it's
the final stage. Once an adult, you're forever
an adult. But today we are actually gonna
talk about
what is beyond adulthood
which is death.
Yeah.
(01:26):
So so so so So what's nice is
you say, you talk about death and then
there's this silence, right? And that in some
ways is indicative of our attitude towards it.
It's a sort of a taboo subject that
that somebody lays down the word death and
suddenly everybody goes
And there has been scholarly work done on
the subject.
Ernest Becker,
who was Canadian or at least spent part
(01:47):
of his life in Canada,
he wrote a book which won the Pulitzer
in, I think, 1974
called The Denial of Death.
And he
iterates upon Freud's hypothesis,
which is that repressed sexuality
is what causes neurosis or anxiety
by claiming that it's actually repression of our
(02:07):
knowledge of our mortality
that is at the root of what used
to be called neurosis and which we now
call anxiety
and it's a fascinating book which I read
at the start of the pandemic and it's
definitely
informed my
views
of how I might be able to best
help people deal with anxieties of elevators,
(02:28):
fear of flying,
fear
of the unknown, fear of even social situations
like public speaking, because it seems like once
someone is able to accept their mortality, once
they're looking at it and they're
believing in it and
they're not trying to escape from it and
they're not trying to repress it, it seems
(02:50):
like there's a trickle down effect to what
you might say are lower level anxieties than
the fear of death. And do you think
this is something more of a a development
from the
results of living in a modern society where
we have antibiotics,
we have incredible technological advances,
where we get to actually be scared of
elevators because they exist.
(03:10):
Because if I think of people 200, 300,
400 years ago,
then death was ever present. You you would
have children. You would expect not all of
them would would survive.
And your own longevity
was permanently in doubt from anything from an
infected cut to, you know. Well, part of
Becker's hypothesis
is that human beings have created
(03:32):
works of art
and we've created religions and monuments like the
pyramids, for example,
to manage our terror
around our knowledge of our own mortality.
So, it's not just in recent years we
have elevators. It's also in the time of
the ancient Egyptians where,
at least according to the hypothesis,
(03:54):
we have to imagine what's beyond this life
in order to be able to cope with
our seemingly
uniquely human
ability to comprehend death. To appreciate death. Although,
I do think possibly the Egyptians could have
done with elevators. Although, there's probably somebody out
there that will prove that they invented the
elevator in the first place. Probably.
(04:15):
So, I know that between you and I,
we're very familiar with the Latin term, a
memento morae. So, can you explain a little
bit about
your take on it, first of all? Well,
the term translates, I believe, to, you know,
remember death. Remember that you will die.
What it means
is that a path to more happiness and
(04:36):
peace
is to confront the inevitable and to accept
it as
frankly
and as quickly as you can.
In other words, if repression of our knowledge
of death and dying
causes us to
be anxious,
then acceptance
of our knowledge of death and dying is
a path to being liberated from such fears.
(04:59):
There are cultures other than the Greeks
who practice this kind of philosophy of remembering
death and dying.
So, in at least some Buddhist
sects
they have the practice of corpse meditation
where, you know, rather than imagining you're in
a peaceful rain forest with waterfalls and birds
(05:19):
you imagine your own body as putrid and
decaying
because honestly on a long enough timeline who
isn't putrid and decaying
but when you're able to meditate upon it
and then to perceive it and to imagine
it to feel it and to be at
peace with it Then who cares if the
elevator could get stuck for 5 minutes before
you're rescued?
(05:40):
Right? And if you you know if you
die in a plane crash
then you still should have been on the
plane so you can take your vacation because,
like, you know, most likely you wouldn't have
done in in a plane crash. I've got
a story about that, which is, I used
to do a lot of commercials. And so,
I'd fly all around the world. And I
think one of the first commercials I did
was in Nepal. It was for Bank of
Posta. And
(06:00):
so, what I'd do is I'd do a
job and I'd stay for longer in whatever
country I was filming in
to explore the country. And so, there I
was, I was in Nepal. I thought, right,
Everest. I always wanted to see Everest. Always
wanted to
to hike up as far as I possibly
could. So, we take an airplane, and the
first airplane's a tiny little airplane.
And before we get on, we hear that
the weather's quite choppy, should we say. It's
(06:22):
a lot of wind, and it's been delayed
and delayed and delayed. It's delayed for like
8 hours. I'm thinking, well, this is a
good sign. They're looking after us. That's, you
know, it's a good sign. They're not gonna
fly because it's it's too dangerous, you know.
And, then eventually we all get on the
plane,
then the engines start, and then they stop
the plane because one of the engine isn't
working. So we all get off of that
plane, I go, oh, that's good. They're all
looking after us. It's okay. And it's perfectly
(06:43):
safe. So let me come to the next
plane and then we set off. Right? So
I'm fine. So then we go and, we're
fine for some time and it's fine, but
then we hit some turbulence.
And I've never experienced turbulence like this before
in my life. People start crying, people are
panicking.
And at one point, the aircraft
drops very very suddenly. Mhmm. And there's a
(07:04):
girl at the front who I see in
zero gravity
fly up into the air. I can see
underneath her, I can see the pilot and
it was extraordinary because I looked out the
window and I could see Everest
from
the windows
glowing.
I remember thinking,
at least I got to see Everest.
I thought if I die now, that's okay.
(07:25):
At least it's a long held dream that
I wanted to be close close to to
to seeing Everest. And so we landed and
we came out, we, you know, kissed the
ground and it was all, you know, all
celebrations.
On the flight back, I was in an
Airbus 380 or whatever it was, on some
Swiss airline
thing, and the slightest bump, I was
like
(07:45):
this. Because that acquiescence that was easier in
the moment, suddenly I was alive and then
I was very very cognizant of my mortality.
Yeah. Well,
near death experiences. So I'm gonna call that
a near death experience. I don't know how
close you were to actually, you know, hitting
the ground, but let's call it a near
death experience
they kind of have a way of giving
people a whole new perspective
(08:06):
both on the meaning of their life as
well as the the okayness
of the fact that one day they're going
to die. Yes. And perhaps the reminder that
you are perhaps able to no longer exist
easier than perhaps you think. The closest thing
I've ever had to a near death experience
was I tried to kill myself
about 12 years ago. Yeah. I can describe
(08:28):
a marked difference
between me before that near death experience
and me
after the near death experience,
where every day and every year I live
these days, I very much feel like these
are extra bonus years of my life
where it doesn't matter so much if like
(08:50):
you know I lose money in the stock
market
it doesn't matter so much if I put
out a podcast and people hate what I've
put out on the internet
because I'm still alive.
Right? So I guess that experience for me
kind of unrepressed
my knowledge of my mortality and now I'm
on the better side of things
(09:11):
where if I do die tomorrow at least
it's not I'm dying at the age of
28 or whatever it was.
At least
I've I've lived my life. I've lived past,
you know, the age of Jesus and Kurt
Cobain and Joplin and Hendrix. At at least
I've done some things with my life since
then. Mhmm.
And I am gonna die one day,
(09:32):
but that doesn't obliviate
everything I've been doing during all the days
when I am still alive.
And perhaps also,
as you say,
you have that sense of every year being
a bonus.
Perhaps sometimes when you face
those moments, it's actually
even the smallest things can be the potential
(09:53):
for joy in life. I know there's somebody
who felt like they were at the end
of their road and
was contemplating
suicide. And and, they bought some tangerines from
the local store.
And they just absentmindedly
started peeling one. And he popped the the,
tandrine or satsuma oil in and the explosion
of taste woke him up. And he he
(10:13):
remember he said he says, I remember thinking,
well at least there's this.
And that was like the smallest and it
was the reminder that actually life
offers up and has potential
in every moment. And death is the end
of that potential. There's nothing
more total for the denial of life and
death. Obviously, it's a truism.
But just as, for instance, if you have
(10:35):
somebody close to you that dies, there's something
extraordinarily profound about that absence,
which is a marked difference
in quality to somebody leaving the country or
somebody who never wants to talk to you
again and ghosts you and disappears.
The knowledge of actual death is so so
profound that I think that it's equally
(10:56):
balanced, I think, by the offering that life
has, I suppose. I think that what you
shared is a good segue
into how then do we cope with our
knowledge of death and the profound knowledge that
once someone's gone they are gone. Period.
Most of us are gonna live enough years
(11:16):
that we're gonna see other people die before
us
before then we have to cope with our
own mortality. So let's start
with how do we cope with the deaths
of others.
My most recent experience
is I I have had a very beloved
cat named Robot.
Those of our listeners who have seen my
YouTube channel or TikTok channel, they've seen Robot.
(11:38):
He's pinned up at the top there.
And he was the sweetest animal and he
got me through the pandemic. I've had him
since he was 6 months old
and he was the most consistent
source of love and warmth in my life
for the 11 years that I had him.
And toward the end of his life, I
was taking him to the vet because there
was something wrong with him, but they never
(12:00):
thought it was cancer.
Christmas Day last year, he collapsed. Within a
few hours, I had to drive up to
out of town to take him to the
closest emergency vet that was taking
new patients and then boxing day I made
the decision to put him down.
And I was sobbing and the one thing
I kept thinking
was
even a cat could do it in the
sense of being such a consistent source of
(12:22):
warmth and love and affectionate even just seeing
me,
not judging me, not letting their own wishes
or desires for me get in the way
of seeing me, but by cat,
I believed could actually see me as I
was and not just as like a food
source or something. Yeah. Obviously, I was going
through this personal experience of having to cope
with with loss
(12:44):
and over the holidays.
Here's
what got me through it, and I've started
to advise my clients of this too.
It is a disservice to those we've lost
if we remember only the final page in
the story of their lives.
Right? So I I had Robot when he
was 6 months old. That that's when I
first held him in my hands.
(13:04):
And then I brought him into where I
was living at the time, and then I
did my best to cat proof the place,
and I had to like clean up after
him when he threw up and everything for
11 whole years.
And when I remember
the 11 years of his life where we
did that kind of thing and we had
shared memories and he was that constant presence
(13:26):
in my life,
then yes,
it didn't end so well.
But it would be such a disservice
to the animal
if I only just thought about
driving up to Newmarket on Christmas Day
and looking at possibly a $20,000
surgery bill to remove the tumour.
I did everything I could to place that,
(13:49):
not to deny it, but to place it
in the context of the entire story of
his life.
And then I remembered that whatever he thought
of me while he was still on the
planet is still valid.
Whatever
views he had when he saw me so
clearly coming back from work every day,
it's still the truth about me
(14:10):
even when he's no longer present. It's not
like his views of me die with him.
It's not like the reality about me that
he brought my attention to dies with him.
It's the reality about me that he brought
my attention to is still there even when
he's gone and that's the lasting impact he
made on me. Now most of us if
everything happens in the right order are gonna
mourn our parents so that they don't have
to go through the pain of having to
(14:31):
mourn us. Mhmm. On the decades long timeline
of having been raised by them and having
them put their values into you, having them
show you how to ride a bike and
having them show you well here's how you
cook this dish
all of this is going to outlast their
time on the planet. And none of this,
none of the memories, none of the values,
none of that dies with the person.
(14:52):
You know, in in my own personal life,
I know that probably I'm gonna die before
the younger people I know will, but I
hope that I will have made an impact
that outlasts me. So my mother died in
97 from from a reasonably
sudden, well, a 3 year illness.
It's funny because for years afterwards, I couldn't
really picture
(15:12):
what it was like before she was sick
because the period of sickness was so dominating.
Obviously, it's
for kids as well, but for anybody, it's
like the sharpest of memories.
Some of them are the most persistent even
if it's the memory of driving to the
hospital looking out the window or something.
This is what somebody else remembers. In the
Harry Potter books, bear with me.
(15:34):
So in the Harry Potter books, there's this
incredible bit where Harry Potter has witnessed death
at the end of the previous book.
And off he goes to school at the
beginning of the next book.
And up till that point, they've been able
to get into horseless carriages
that pull them up to the gates of
the school from the station. No horses, just
(15:55):
these carriages. Right? But this time when he
goes, he sees these horses, these dark black
horses and he's astonished. He's quite scared by
them. And then I think it's Luna Lovegood
turns around and says, You see them, don't
you?
And he says, What do you mean? He
says, You see the horses.
I said, Yes, I do. What are they?
I don't understand. She says, Well, because you've
seen death. And Luna had also
(16:17):
seen the death, I think of her mother.
And it's When I read that, I was
like, That's just so brilliant in the sense
that
those who
do lose somebody close to them, particularly when
they're young,
it it really alters your understanding of the
world because you can you can live under
the illusion. This just goes back to mentor
Moray as well. You can live under the
(16:37):
illusion that somehow you're gonna get away with
it. That somehow
if you just sort of go, la, la,
la, it's not gonna touch you. And yet,
it will and it does.
And as the years pass, actually, I I
remember more and more about what she was
like
in the years preceding
and when I was much younger.
And that
over time, that focus on the illness, on
(17:00):
the sharp pain of the illness
has dissipated somewhat.
And I feel like there are many aspects
of my personality which I still get to
thank her for
and that I am now giving to my
kids as well. To me, that's an extraordinary
legacy. And if you think about for a
moment, if you can manage to deliver those
good memories, those good perspectives, those good feelings
(17:22):
between one generation and the other. That means
that whatever it is good that my mom
did that I can pass on to my
kids might echo down for another
6, 7 generations.
Death is not the end of somebody in
the slightest. It's the end of the house
they were living in.
But the memories of the house don't disappear.
Well, there's a saying and I've heard it
(17:44):
attributed to a number of people. I think
it's Hemingway and Banksy.
The saying is that they say you die
twice,
the first time when your body perishes
and the second time when someone says your
name for the last time.
So this is why I say that someone
like Anthony Wayne Banksy
are going to outlive their physical presence.
(18:05):
I feel like even in the limited amount
of work that I do, like, I'm not
really, like, famous, but, like, I do believe
I've made an impact over my many years
of doing what I can do to change
people's lives.
Even if I, like, get hit by a
truck tomorrow,
I will have made a lasting impact at
least among my clientele because sometimes I was
the first person to say that your self
(18:26):
love is valid.
Although I can see very clearly that there's
a clear line for you,
between your
daily job
and manifesting change in other people's lives. Right?
So, it's actually quite a clear
line. For some people it's not quite so
clear.
Some people,
they don't get the
benefits of that from their work. So in
(18:48):
some ways I look at and think well,
yes.
And
it is also true that
those moments that you spend
with your family,
with your friends,
yes, with your coworkers,
that just as that there's infinite possibility for
turning anything into a source of joy, there
(19:08):
is also infinite possibility
to be mindful
and to actually
appreciate
what is and what is now because
at any point it can go.
And and that means that other people as
well. It's not just, you know, remember you
will die is the momentum mori.
But
implicit in that is that actually remember other
(19:31):
people will die as well. It's not that
it's remember death, I think is a better
translation of the spirit of it.
One thing I say to almost all of
my clients
is that
you are clearly
a living human being. You are among the
living.
The flip side to remember death is
that currently,
(19:52):
in the present day, in the material world,
you have the spark of life.
And beyond that, when you are perceiving
the full complete
extent of it, you can see that you're
a 100% alive.
Those of us who kinda slog through our
days feeling half alive are actually completely alive,
but they've gotten distracted
from parts of it. And even in this
(20:13):
very second, if anybody's listening to this right
now, I invite you just for a moment,
force the podcast, you don't have us yassering
away, and just take a moment to focus
on your breathing, on the sense of your
blood coursing through your veins, your heart pumping,
your lungs breathing fresh air in, and and
getting rid of the air that you don't
want, and just take a moment
(20:34):
to register
just how alive you are. And because this
is available at any point in your day,
and in some ways, it's another one of
those panaceas for want of a better better
word. Sometimes people feel like when they're a
100% alive, that that that they're manic, they're
deluded,
their feet are not on the ground, but
that's actually the clear perception of your current
state.
(20:56):
Even if feeling half alive or feeling half
dead, even if it feels like the norm,
It's not actually your your current state and
even your dog or cat can see that.
There's also an equation
that is often made about
because if you say you're intrinsically alive period,
foundational,
that's it. And then you go, Well okay,
(21:17):
all right. So are there occasions
when
it is apt and right
to even pursue or to wish for death?
And let me unpack this a little bit
more because that's not what I'm saying is
the case.
I'm saying that a realist or perhaps utilitarian
would say, well, okay. What if you lost
your sense of sight, smell, taste, hearing? What
if you were totally paralyzed
(21:38):
that you could not be part of a
social community?
People are gonna have to look after you.
Mhmm. My argument would be, there is still
life whilst you are breathing, whilst there is
life inside you. This is
the difference between you and a rock. Mhmm.
Right?
However, there's also that equally there would be
people say, Well okay, there is a point
(21:59):
at which it's okay to pursue death. I
mean it's not like
the stoics were particularly shy of killing themselves.
They saw it as having a role,
that discretion. So, yeah,
what do you think about the balance between
the quality of life and
its continuance, you say? Well, I definitely disagree
(22:19):
with the view that the more quantity of
life a person has the better it is
because we don't even treat our pet animals
like this if we have an animal that's
suffering, we want to alleviate their suffering.
And we do factor in quality of life,
not just merely quantity of life. We're talking
about our pet cat or our dog. Like,
(22:39):
I would have paid for robot surgery Mhmm.
Except they told me he's probably gonna die
on the operating table because it's that hard
to operate
on. So I figured that on the balance
of
probabilities let's give him a good death. So
I was there. You know, I don't know
what everyone else was thinking when they heard
me sobbing through the door. I'm sure they
heard it before, but, you know, so I
(23:00):
was holding this paw.
In those last moments, because I took the
time to kind of like spend another hour
or 2 with him,
there was something he gave to me at
the very end
while I was sobbing.
Right? It's like he forgot his pain for
a moment. He forgot himself, and he looked
up at me with only concern for me.
(23:23):
And, you know, I had to make a
decision at some point, you know, to call
the vet in to to complete the procedure.
But he was able to give me that
before he left. And that definitely has made
an impact.
You know, I did my best to kind
of, you know, hold his paw, act like
everything's alright. The vet told me that sometimes
owners leave the room.
But it's it's I think it's an underestimation
(23:46):
of oneself
to feel like they can't handle
their presence
at their pet's passing.
I think everyone is capable of it and
those who think they can't are underestimating
themselves.
And it is worthwhile.
Difficult emotions are not necessarily in themselves something
to be avoided,
which is why we're talking about, you know,
(24:08):
confronting death, looking at it, understanding it is
gonna happen. Difficult emotions are gonna come up,
but but it's when you're able to sit
with the emotions and and feel them
that you then come to the other side
of acceptance. Mhmm.
So for humans,
I am going to put forth a claim
that I think Einstein said it's tasteless to
unnecessarily prolong life.
(24:29):
I am of the view that mere
quantity
is not enough
and that quality of life really does matter.
That I'd rather have a lot of quality
of life than just merely a lot of
quantity of life. I know that that when
my mom got sick, there were members of
her family and people who knew her who
refused to see her
(24:50):
because
it it was too they
knew she was dying and they simply were
not willing to sit in that discomfort.
I remember thinking as a kid, thinking, that's
so weird.
And that's what your story just now just
put me in mind of. Right at the
very last second,
your cat provided an immense service to you
(25:12):
and to your
life ahead by doing that, right? And man,
it can be hard. I mean,
yeah, boy, it can be hard. But I
suppose the good death is the one that
shows
how it can be done with acquiescence
and maintaining
that relationship to the love of life and
(25:34):
the love of people living.
There's something in there. There's something about that.
And yes, animals do it.
I remember my grandmother used to have this
thing where she used to sort of wiggle
my finger like this when I was a
kid. She had a stroke and she was
in this awful hospital in Barnet.
And I kept I couldn't I was much
younger at that point. I couldn't
(25:55):
fathom what was gonna happen. I said, oh,
you're gonna get up and you'll be doing
weights weights by the end of the week
kind of thing, joking, joking, tasteless jokes and
people looking at each other for going, this
is not gonna happen.
And she reached out of her hand, she
couldn't open eyes but she just grabbed my
finger and wiggled it in this in the
probably the only thing that she could have
done
to say, yeah. I I see you. I
hear you. I'm glad you're here and, Hi.
(26:15):
You know? It was
And yeah, so I look at that and
think, That was a pretty good death.
I often think of this actually. I sort
of think, Well, what do you have to
do
to prepare yourself to be the kind of
person
that can
face your own sickness
and death with equanimity?
(26:36):
What kind of person do you need to
be to acquiesce
to that and not rage, rage against the
dying of the light? Now, Dylan Thomas's
poem is brilliant because we all feel that
almost entitled rage.
How dare life be taken away from me?
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And yet, I would say,
no, don't.
You know, rage, rage with a passion for
(26:58):
life
and accept that you're gonna die.
Something else something else I advise my clients
of, and this will be true in most
of their cases, it's that if they're
25, if they're 35,
if they're 45
even,
unless they have knowledge otherwise, they don't actually
have to prepare to die tomorrow.
(27:22):
Now if someone's
75, if someone's 85, if they're lucky enough
to have reached that age, then they're gonna
be prepared
mentally and emotionally
to be thinking about
death possibly tomorrow.
You don't really have to
prepare
I guess
to be dead I mean, obviously, there is
(27:44):
memento mori. There is the corpse meditation. There
is benefit to this.
But at the same time,
I would suggest it's better preparation for tomorrow
to prepare to be living, to prepare to
live another day and to live it well
and to live it excellently.
And then if in the future you get
some diagnosis or if in the future you're
just old,
(28:04):
then,
you know, when you prepare for death at
that point, it's not a tragedy.
If after a long enough adventurous enough, well
lived enough life,
then you kick the bucket. Mhmm.
So to answer the question of how do
we kind of die an excellent death or
how do we face the inevitable
(28:25):
with dignity,
I would say that even if you don't
have an answer to how you're gonna do
it,
you're probably gonna have a long enough timeline
to figure that bit out.
I mean, if there's like no diagnosis and
you die tomorrow, you don't really have to
be prepared because it's, you know, it's it's
the truck bearing down on you or or
whatever.
(28:45):
Although perhaps
the answer is not to treat
death as
different in the sense that
if the answer to a fear of death
or if the answer
to who do you become
in order to face death well, in order
to do death well,
perhaps you've got to do life well. Perhaps
(29:06):
that's your job in fact. Is that those
same skills that you develop to do life
well, those same skills that
you use that stop you from
worrying about things that you can't control,
Stop you from holding on to baggage of
the past and therefore raging at the lost
or missed opportunities.
All those sorts of things, the things that
(29:26):
we have to deal with in everyday life.
And if you do those well, perhaps you'll
be better able to cope with the diagnosis
when it comes. Absolutely.
We're all gonna die anyway, right? That's a
reality. At some point at
some age, we're all gonna face the inevitable.
I mean, like, even if there's like this
immortality medication or whatever, eventually, like, global warming
(29:48):
is gonna kill you or the hate death
of the universe is gonna kill you. So
we're all gonna die eventually
and whether we worry about it or not,
most of us are going to reach something
resembling old age
before we die.
Which in itself, old age is gonna be
something that again, if you've equipped yourself in
(30:08):
life to
to acquiesce and self love and Yeah. And
all those, then you'll do getting old better
perhaps.
So, the the choice to make
is are you gonna become an old person
anyway
and you've not gone to Japan
and you've not written that book and you've
(30:28):
not learned how to play the ukulele
are you gonna become an old person who's
out of fear or
inhibition or anything else? You've not done all
of that or
are you gonna become old anyway
and you have done all of those things?
Because those of us who remain among the
living, we have the ability
on the whatever the timeline of our futures
(30:49):
are to then do the things such that
when we're facing the inevitable, it's not a
tragedy
if you've lived a full, rich, good life
and you kick the bucket anyway. Which also
goes back to a previous episode where we
discussed
values and living according
to those values. Because perhaps your values
are not to go to Japan. It could
be any of the multitude
(31:11):
of values that there are.
But they can also include
looking back.
Some previous generations didn't say, Yes, I managed
to bring up a family. Full stop.
Do you know what I mean?
That can be an extraordinary accomplishment in and
of itself and it may be enough for
somebody to look back on and be proud
about.
(31:31):
So
I suppose what I'm saying is that
if you look back and you've done things
that aligned with
your values
and you did the best you could to
live by them and make the most of
them, then that's a life well lived. And
perhaps that's
given you the skills to be able to
face death well.
While we remain among the living,
(31:52):
and we also know that at some point
we're gonna face the inevitable,
It is sometimes useful to make decisions through
a lens of
are you gonna regret this or not regret
this when you're on your deathbed?
Right? So there are gonna be some things
we're afraid to do
and which we're not even gonna care about
(32:14):
on our deathbed.
And there are gonna be some other things
where regardless of how that trip to Japan
goes, we are not gonna regret having gone
on that trip on our deathbed.
So if you kind of look at the
long timeline of your life and ultimately what's
really gonna matter,
that is a useful lens for deciding how
you're gonna live between now and that future
(32:36):
date.
Thank you so much for listening, and all
the way to the end. I know the
subject matter today is not as lighthearted as
some other episodes,
but lightheartedness, I would suggest,
follows from being able to handle the heavy
stuff in life.
Pascal and I are practical philosophers
in a way at the Morpheus Clinic For
(32:58):
Hypnosis. We're hypnotherapists,
but what we do for our clients is
we instill these kinds of views and perspectives
in them so that they could benefit from
our thought.
If you want to connect with us, go
to www.morphisclinic.com
and ask my team for a free consultation.
If you have enjoyed,
(33:19):
or found any of the things that we've
spoken about today have resonated with you, then
please subscribe
to us on YouTube at Morpheus Hypnosis or
anywhere you get your podcasts, Apple Podcasts or
Spotify and so on. We'll be there, and
we look forward to sharing with you our
next subject matter, which will be on
masculinity.
(33:40):
Healthy masculinity.
Go ahead and follow us. You'll be notified
of our next episode.
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