What's the Plan

Often in life, we are obsessed with planning everything in detail. We plan meals, vacations, sales quotas, home redecorating, retirement, budgets, parties, dates, what car we are going to buy, what we are going to say, and what we are going to wear. There's something uniquely human about our desire to plan everything.

It occurred to me that all this desire to think about the future course of things comes to a grinding halt in one conspicuous area. Thoughts of our impending doom. We don't want to think about our bodies failing or how we might die. We spend a considerable amount of time avoiding thinking about it. We spend a furious amount of time planning for everything else that comes between now and then.

It occurred to me that if we spent just a little bit of time thinking about our own mortality when making all our other plans, we might eat healthier, exercise more, and treat our friends and family with a little more love and respect. This doesn't always happen. Many of the people in the hospital or just in poor health today ate, drank, or smoked their way into that condition without much thought about where they were headed. People take the easy path of doing what pleases them, indulging in their vices and expend as little effort exerting themselves as possible. Not everyone, but most people. The planning is all about the things they love or want to do and not about how they are going to finish their life.

But we also plan for what happens after that. It's called religion. I think many people think about religion in a negligent manner. They look at it as a country club membership. They'll pay their dues by going to church when they can and contributing what they can. They'll say they believe and try to live a pious life, when it occurs to them. They may not have any real control over what happens after they die, but they will plan and act as if they do.

Sometimes, I wonder if people are really just fooling themselves. How do they know they're signed up for the right religion and doing the right things to get into heaven? What if they die and instead of the pearly gates, Zeus spends eternity berating them for not offering enough animal sacrifices? There was a South Park episode where a bunch of people died all at once and they were being sorted out in heaven, and someone in the crowd shouts out "Who was right? What is the one true religion?" and God or St. Peter says, "The correct answer is.... Mormons." You can hear people in the crowd going "What!? No way!"

I'm not an atheist. I'm of the belief that we don't know, can't know, and won't get to know what happens after we die until we die. Anything can happen. We could simply stop existing, nothing that was us may continue at all. It's hard to imagine, hard to believe, because it seems like such an insult, but it could happen. We could get recycled, reincarnated and reborn (what if it's no guarantee that you'll be human?). We could have something else entirely happen that we don't even have a frame of reference to understand. We could have any one of the religions in the world's story be the one and only thing that happens, or we could have each person's individual belief come to pass for that person. I kind of like the idea that your own personal force of will and belief will manifest itself - makes you feel powerful to imagine that's true.

To me, we don't get to know what's on the other side of life. It's a lot like a singularity, the universe, the big bang. They call it a singularity because there's no way of knowing what happens on the other side of that point in time. Some physicists believe that the universe may be like an enormous single stroke engine. It could be continuously expanding, collapsing, and being reborn in an endless cycle. To not know something isn't necessarily a bad thing. Often it's a good starting point for knowledge. I like to listen to everyone's idea of what they think the answer to this question is. I think often they just believe what they want to believe, what gives them comfort. What gives me comfort is to keep an open mind and wait and find out when it happens to me.

And to eat well and exercise enough. I would like to plan a little for the physical demise.

For whom the bell tolls

OK, this is not going to be funny or uplifting. It's a morbid thought that somehow gives me comfort.

I heard this guy talking about having a "near death" experience. He was in a foreign country and was accosted by a group of men with guns. He said that they were pointing their guns at his head and he was sure they were going to kill him. In the time that he had to think about it, he said that his "life flashed before his eyes", but not in the movie scene kind of way. He said that he thought that this was it, and he was just resigned to it. He faintly hoped that it wouldn't hurt, but other than that, he felt numb. It occurred to him that he was 36, and he would have liked to live longer, but that he had had a full and good life and if this was all he got, that was enough. They didn't kill him and he said that the experience changed him profoundly, although he did not get to elaborate. It sounded from the slightly dull retelling of the story that it didn't make life richer and more appreciated, more like it just traumatized him somewhat.

I used to think about the Civil War (any war will do, actually), where huge numbers of men were extinguished, many at the prime of their life, in their youth. Those that survived the war often lived to ripe old ages, 80 to 90 (you'll notice this if you ever visit a Civil War veteran's cemetery). While I often thought that exposure to all the diseases and the resulting immunities that were developed were part of the cause for this longevity, I've also wondered if there wasn't a psychological effect. Living the life taken from your comrades.

I've said that I want to live to be 125. This was in response to loosing both of my parents to tobacco induced disease while they were still pretty young. They had their own fate in their hands and chose not to do what it takes to live longer. I've speculated that with advances in medicine, that we only have to hold on for a few more decades until the fountain of youth treatments (actual longevity treatments and/or cures to most of the things that eventually kill us) will be available. So aim for what you really think would reasonably happen. If the life expectancy now is 80, just a few medical tricks would make 125 not that difficult. I assume that this is a vital 125, where you can remember everything and still move under your own power. So I've planned on working all my life, not retiring, but switching professions as I grow older.

This rambling background leads up to the Virginia Tech massacre - the senseless killing of young and ambitious students with their whole life ahead of them.

My response is to take note, think the appropriate consoling thoughts, and then forget it and move on. I expect to see a lot of death and tragedy in life. If you're reasonably aware of how life works, you will know this.

It's not a bad thing, it's just how things work. You take your lessons from the fallen, avoid all the obvious traps yourself, keep your affairs in order like you could die tomorrow, and live like there's no end in sight. Your own life is usually not all that important in the great scheme of things. It's important to those you care about and love, your friends and family, but outside of your immediate circle, your death will not alter the world. There's nothing to lament or regret here, it's just the way it is. Knowing this may help you position your life in such a way to get the most out of it while you're alive.