Satisfied in the End

I think I just experienced the joy of a Boise spring evening for the first time this year. About 10 minutes ago, I left Thomas Hammer and rode my bike down Bannock towards home. I headed east while the sun began to set behind me. Despite the time approaching 8pm; the sunlight that fell on Lucky Peak, St. Lukes, and the tops of trees around me was a bright and cheery orange, and the air that still held warmth was filled with the scent of fresh blossoms.

As abrupt as it may seem, these observations are the perfect segway into a quick discussion on the non-religious life, which is an ideal I hope to fully develop over the years.

One of the biggest challenges one faces when trying to imagine a happy, content life free of religious belief is determining how to deal with fear of death. An idea which might serve as an alternative to a belief in an afterlife as a means of preventing fear of death from paralyzing us in old age is the "satisfied" life. Indeed, while I haven't quite pinned this concept down, it has been a guiding principle for me for years now. It approaches common sense-something that most people can agree upon, and something that transcends religious belief. In short, the ideal is that through careful and deliberate living, through the nurturing and cultivation of joys and pleasure, we fill ourselves with greater and greater contentment, and anticipate an end of our life during which we are filled with satisfaction from that which we have experienced. The analogy I've used is the feeling you have after great sex, or an amazing meal, or a thoroughly entertaining movie-or all three. You've experienced the greatest feelings or sensations that you are capable of experiencing, and for a brief moment you feel as though you could die happy. Of course, there's something lame about a young person being completely satisfied. We associate youthfullness with an inherent dissatisfaction that is both charming and exciting. Great artists are never fully satisfied, right? Well, if they were smart, they would be when they're on their death bed. I think that it is necessary for us to live as though satisfaction is attainable, but only after seeking it in small measure, in moments, year after year, through new experience after new experience. If we can be confident that some dissatisfaction or jadedness or obsession will result in our accomplishing great things-things that we're sure will equal great satisfaction-then we shouldn't be too quick to rid ourselves of those feelings.
Of course, fear of death is complicated, and probalby something impossible to completely overcome. Still, someone on their death bed who has fond memories of their life and who has told themselves repeatedly that there will be a point when they are ready to go, will most likely feel better than someone who has spent their whole life slaving away for an after life that may or may not be waiting for them.

Another idea I've had upon the same subject is more philisophical. It pertains to the way we think about life. On this earth there are billions of people. Although we've been told that we are unique individuals, it seems unreasonable to think that each of us is experiencing and thinking extremely unique things. In fact, humans are so much alike that the only thing preventing all human life from being one life is the physical seperation of our bodies. If one were to think of human life as something that is more connected mentally, emotionally, and physically (family/genetics-you are literally a combination of your parents. your cells are a continuation of their cells/dna); then we would think less of the seperateness we feel by being isolated from each other, body and mind. In fact there seems to me to be less support for a liberal, individualistic view of being, and more for an integrated sort. Clearly, the latter is not the view that informs my choices on how to live my life-atleast not with the day to day minutia.
Anyway, if one considers this view of life, then they might see that the end of an individual experience in the form of death is not something to fear all that much, because other individual experiences continue, and one can imagine a simple shift in consciousness from our being to another being-not literally, exactly, but nearly so. A body may die, but pleasure, hope, anticipation, feeling, love, etc, remain just a psychic jump away. Our ego may die, our shallow self perception may die, but we basically live on in everyone else-who happen to be 99.999% just like us. In short, we need to get over ourselves at some point. I'm sure having children and grandchildren helps with this exercise. Personally, I suspect that I'm capable of relating to others enough-to seeing them like I'm seeing myself-to help dull the sharp fear of death, if that makes any sense. ...anyway, I can't die now because I'm starving...gotta go.

Oh, and the way this all relates to my bike ride: I felt a sort of joy or contentment that was conducive to the same type of satisfaction one would want to feel at the end of life. That's all.