Derivations on a Theme -- Dying To Know

Trey Smith

Here I am, alive. I'm a human being who can envision his own death. I enjoy life, but it's slipping away by the day, the hour, the minute, the second. I'm 63 fucking years old! My lifelong experiencing of one-thing-after-the-other is going to come to an abrupt halt with a final thing: the instant of my death. After that... nothing. Not even the awareness of nothing.

After waking up this morning, I felt pretty much normal again. Aware of death, of course, yet immersed in the living of life. Thankfully. But the primal fear I'd experienced last night was still lingering closer to the surface of my consciousness than it usually is.
~ from Uncertainty: the key to dealing with death and non-existence by Blogger Brian at Church of the Churchless ~

So much of our lives is basted in the juice of uncertainty! We desperately want to know unequivocally what comes next, be we know intuitively that there is no way TO know. We may latch onto myths and legends that seek to provide the certainty that inherently is lacking, but this only calms our surface consciousness. Down deep, the puzzle remains as intractable as ever.

As we grow old, it's hard not to contemplate our own death. Based on the history of everything around us, we are fairly certain that death will come knocking on our door. But even here, we can't be 100% certain! What we call death may turn out to be something akin to awakening from a dream. Maybe none of us was ever alive in the first place!

While we humans like to think we are each different and unique, there is one tie that binds us all together in a disjointed mass or blob: The desire for some modicum of certainty in an existence that provides none. It doesn't matter where we were born, the color of our skin, our religious or lack of religious beliefs, or whether we are poor or rich. None of this matters.

Every single one of us fears this thing we call death because, after all is said and done, none of us has the foggiest notion what it does or does not entail. We tremble in the face of uncertain uncertainty.