Nothing is more peculiar and abhorrent than existing with the knowledge of your imminent demise. I can’t count the times I’ve wished I was a bug or a plant, completely oblivious to my upcoming appointment with death. At times, I wished I’d never been born at all.
This feeling of bottomless dread overlooks no one, though it may manifest differently in each of us. Traditionally, human beings have used religion to understand and cope with death. During the Renaissance, existential philosophy stepped in and largely overtook religious thinking – two different wet towels tossed over the same fire. Day to day, people will do whatever is necessary to avert their gaze from the flames: recite empty platitudes, visit Las Vegas, grieve the dead with rituals or celebrations, immerse themselves in art, pour their lives into their pets and children, the list goes on.
Existential terror is a little black box in the closet of every mind – a peripheral presence, but one that will inevitably be felt. Upon opening it, the first thing you will feel is terror. You’ll want to seal it up and shove it in a corner. I encourage you not to. While this box has the power to ruin your life, it also has the potential to save your life. Let’s not turn away.
I invite you to unpack existential depression.
At the root of existential philosophy is the unsettling idea that there are no absolute truths aside from the certainty of death. It is no secret that we all fear death. Evolutionary psychologists define fear as a product of natural selection, an adaptive trait. Without fear of death, our species would not endure. Still, justifying fear in this way is about as soothing and helpful as your mother telling you to “be yourself” on your first day of school.
How in the world are we supposed to move forward and enjoy the supposed gift of life with the burden of this cursed knowledge?
Human beings have developed a number of instinctive ways to cope.
One coping mechanism identified by psychologists is Terror Management Theory (TMT). According to TMT, every human fears living an insignificant life that will only be erased by death. So we cope by identifying with an important group and adopting world views that protect our self-esteem and sense of worth. In other words, we strive to build our identities and egos around an external social cause.
Similarly, some devote their lives to leaving a legacy – a tangible impact that will endure beyond death. This could manifest as the pursuit of a career or starting a family. Some alleviate their anxiety with a belief in the afterlife. Some avoid thinking about death at all (I believe this is the most dangerous way to cope).
But what should you do if, like me, you are unable to find comfort in any of these traditional coping methods? There seems to be an achilles heel in each. First, I can’t bring myself to ignore death. I also can’t convince myself that there is an afterlife. And I haven’t found solace in devoting myself to a social cause, leaving a tangible legacy, or passing on my genes, because first I would have to believe that the constructs that uphold human life and civilization are inherently meaningful. And I am not convinced of that.
After all, the entire human race will eventually disappear, just like me. As will our planet, and the universe. So tell me, where is comfort to be found?
Personally, my journey through existential depression has been a years-long roller coaster, with dips that gradually gained altitude and speed.
Existential dread crept into my consciousness several times growing up. As a young child, I stared out the window at the moon shortly after my dog died. I imagined her cold body curled up in the dirt, untouched even by the harsh moonlight, and my own body tingled with fear. At age 14, I waited at my bus stop one early winter morning and watched a single star hang over a frosted field. Unsettled, I realized the light from that star was millions of years old, an ancient projection cast from deep in an endless vacuum. Loneliness penetrated me unlike it ever had before. My insides felt as empty as the sky.
Cognitive dissonance was my best friend. Each time this happened, I successfully shoved the black box back in my mind’s closet. I never fully opened it because on some level, I genuinely didn’t know how I’d react if I did. Could I maintain control? Would I be able to face my death honestly and emerge in one piece?
Things eventually came to a head in college, on an otherwise insignificant evening. I sat in the dining hall with a friend and my mind buzzed with small, immediate concerns: assignments, my romantic relationship, counting calories – the usual.
My friend was distressed. We were immersed in a conversation about finding purpose in our careers. At some point in her rant, she defined meaning as “what one leaves behind after death.” A legacy gal. I argued that the current experiences we have, and those we make possible for others, are all that matter. She countered with a statement I’ll never forget:
“It’s just hard to work for anything, because after you die, there is nothing. It’s all gone, even your memories.”
A simple enough statement. But it burrowed into my brain like a parasite. “Even your memories.” That was the key.
Memory is what makes us, us.
If I have no memory of something, I thought, it might as well not have happened at all. Remembering something keeps it real. If you can’t do that, there’s no proof or legitimacy. It’s lost in time. What did that mean about my life? About me? If my life’s memory would one day be erased, what was the point of living it? Why obtain memories that would vanish quicker than a scent on the wind?
I had grown up religious. By this point, I had given up on religion and the afterlife. But I’d maintained some cognitive dissonance from this idea: that everything I am, was, and will be, will inevitably be gone. Irretrievable.
The little black box was blown wide open, and I couldn’t look away.
The remainder of that dinner faded into the background as my heart slid into my gut like a bleeding sun. My skull buzzed, no longer a cacophony of immediate, regular life concerns. Something much larger was happening, something chemical. Dread crept through my bloodstream and turned every corner of my being dark, like a ghost extinguishing lights as it floats down a winding hallway.
The next few weeks were a hell I’ve never experienced before.
Reality faded into the background, no longer valid or believable. Day to day, I walked not in the world but through a painting. Smiling strangers were wicker dolls with empty grins. I was utterly alone. Conversations sounded like echoes. I didn’t even trust the leaves – just the heat of the sun as it cooked through my skin and warmed my organs. Such a fragile sack of cells, my body. Me.
In a feeble attempt to end my suffering, I turned to art and literature, which always have a way of accessing elusive topics such as love and death.
This poem by Langston Hughes stood out to me.
“Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams.
For if dreams go,
Life is a barren field
Covered with snow.”
In that same search, I found a quote from Kierkegaard’s Works of Love:
“Lovingly to hope all things is the opposite of despairingly to hope nothing at all… To relate oneself expectantly to the possibility of the good is to hope. To relate oneself expectantly to the possibility of evil is to fear.”
I thought it interesting that when I researched death and despair, I found messages of hope.
The archaic definition of hope was “a feeling of trust.” Now, it has come to mean ”an expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.” But I like the idea of hope as trust. The driving force behind my existential terror was my loss of trust in the world. In my integrity as a being. In life itself. No wonder I couldn’t feel hope. Without it, there was no more reason to live. I lost focus in school, because the mere pursuit of a future was now arbitrary. I couldn’t enjoy the people I loved most, because making new memories felt futile. One day, they would all be erased.
I will return to the concept of hope later. First, I’d like to detail the mental gymnastics that eventually led to acceptance and peace. I hope that these tips can be helpful for anyone else suffocating in the grip of existential depression.
When trying to rationalize my existential terror, I asked myself two important questions.
The first is: what will I lose when I die?
Death is a threat to our physical bodies, but the grief that accompanies it is related to our social and interpersonal identities. The loss of a loved one is the loss of a social being, not just an arbitrary clump of atoms. This applies to thinking about one’s own death as well. A big part of the terror we feel surrounding death is linked to identity threat.
Redefining and separating ourselves from identity can be useful in accepting death. Irvin D. Yalom, an American psychiatrist and expert in existential depression and existential therapy, discusses “disidentification,” a psychotherapeutic exercise used to process death. In this exercise, an individual writes down answers to the question “who am I?” and meditates on giving up each definition of self, one by one.
How can giving up identity help us process death? If death is the loss of “you,” the first step to accepting death is understanding what “you” really are.
Here is how I visualize it: I am in the center of a solar system. I see planets turn around me, these are my thoughts and emotions. Further away I see memories in the form of stars. Just like the sun, I am bound to the center of this system. Each moment of my life turns around me, irreversible and perpetually new. But I am unchanging.
The most important part is this: If you can observe something, it means you are not that. I observe the solar system, therefore I am not the solar system. So you are not your physical body, thoughts, emotions, memories, or ego. More simply put, you are not your identity. You are just the observer of your identity.
If identity is a construct, the real “you” is mere consciousness.
This idea may be scary. To accept it is to accept a lack of ownership and control over oneself. I found an incredible sense of freedom and peace in it. While you may release ownership of the self, you can reclaim ownership over your experience of the self, and of your experience of life.
We can alleviate the worst of our grief by pivoting our focus.
It is nearly impossible to detach completely from identity, and identity is integral to finding subjective meaning in life. However, it is possible to engage with identity while maintaining a healthy level of attachment to it. To strike this balance, I’ve found it helps to view my identity as a project, or an external entity that I have the privilege of exploring and building every day. It is a vessel for me to move about the world and alter the form and color of my experience. However, it is not me. When I define what I am in this way, losing that “what” is a much easier pill to swallow, and my relationship to existence is much more secure.
Losing consciousness itself is still scary, and that is inescapable. We are hardwired to fear the void. It is impossible for the human brain to comprehend eternity, and in the same vein, it is impossible for it to comprehend “nothing.”
“Nothing” cannot be measured. It cannot be seen, smelled, or felt. All we can measure is the lack of something, rather than nothingness itself. It is impossible to think about nothing, because the very act of thinking requires substance as the object of thought. So the only way to comprehend “nothing” is as a lack of something, or the loss of something. In this case, a loss of life and consciousness.
In short, the idea of nothingness goes against everything we are, and against the very fact that we are.
My fear of the void is natural, innate, and chemical. But that does not mean there is actually anything to be afraid of.
This leads into the next question I ask myself when reasoning with existential terror:
What is the worst thing that can happen as a result of death?
I’ve heard it said that your death doesn’t happen to you, it happens to those you love. When someone dies, they merely lose consciousness. It is sad and scary. But on the other side, what is there to fear? There is no pain, no negative experience. Of course, I am making a grand assumption here that there is nothing after death. I wish I could die and return to offer a first person account of what really lies on the other side, but I cannot. The only thing I can reasonably believe, though I wish I didn’t, is that our experience after death is the same as before birth. In other words, there isn’t one. Before you were born, you did not suffer. So why would you suffer after you cease to exist? You will not be capable of grieving your own death. This may be unnerving, but it is important to remember.
You are safe here, in your limited experience of life. You will be aware until you are relieved of that awareness and the burdens that come with it. It may take some time to see the beauty in that, but there is peace on the other side. The real grief, and subsequent pain, is left to the living.
Eventually, I was able to preemptively grieve my own death, and life did not seem so terrifying anymore. The process was slow, and there were days I slid backwards into depression. But even after I’d pulled myself out of fear, I was still faced with the issue of redefining my purpose. After all, there were still no ultimate truths. At some point, I had to make a decision. I could continue living my life as if it was meaningless. Or I could decide that meaning is still a worthy pursuit, even if it is merely a construct.
Being alive is not an easy thing to do. It is terrifying, painful, and bewildering.
Give yourself some credit for sticking it out this far. And remember that living is also a wonderful responsibility. As a free agent, an impermanent being with no control over the natural world, you have the privilege of asking yourself these questions: What matters to you, at the end of the day? What do you want to do?
Here is what meaning looks like to me.
This most recent holiday season launched me into a fresh bout of sorrow and hopelessness. On New Years Eve, I stood atop a mountain suffocating in oversized ski gear, about to tackle the bunny slope with my friends. I dissociated. Sun gleaned off the snow and hurt my eyes. A mountain loomed over me, but its beauty was inaccessible. In its shadow, I was inescapably alone.
Movement in my periphery brought me back to Earth. A toddler wandered from her ski lesson, waddling like a penguin before plopping down in a nearby snow bank. She scooted down the slope and grinned. Then she did it again, and again. When she noticed me watching her, she smiled mischievously. I smiled back, suddenly giddy. This is enough. My eyes grew misty with relief as I realized I was safe. Small displays of joy and companionship always drag me back from the edge of despair to the world of the living.
For me, meaning in life looks a lot like this: moments of refuge grounded in love, only made possible by one another.
I believe people are all we have. I could explore every beautiful destination on the planet, but if I do so in bad company, or with no company, the experience will be meaningless to me. In tandem, I have centered my life’s purpose around relationships and human connection. I hope to spend my limited time on Earth helping others feel less alone – through the pursuit of art, storytelling, companionship, and simply having a blast. I owe this clarity of perspective to my relationship with mortality, my little black box.
I promised I would circle back to hope, so here it is.
I mentioned the black box has potential to save your life. Mine did. I haven’t closed it since, and I don’t want to. Every time I look inside, I have a renewed gratitude and lust for life. In darkness, I open my eyes. In loneliness, I cling to those I love. In the face of death, I learn to live.
If you liked what you read here, consider checking out our other blog posts! Email Greg Murray at greg@adaptiveedgecoaching.com for a consultation to learn more about how to overcome existential depression and create a meaningful life.