Reflection 3: Death and the Present Moment

This last reflection on Singer’s book will focus on the concepts of death and happiness. I am very scared of the death of people I love and this is why I was initially sceptical with the association made in the book between the contemplation of death and the fact of giving more meaning to our lives. What is strange is that I was never scared of dying. I have been scared of being attacked, abused or raped, but never to die. I rather felt that behind death is nothing but rest and end and no more feelings to worry about. Whereas the death of other people entails pain, grief, sadness and confusion, and is therefore much more scary to me.

So I thought about it a lot: why and how would thinking about death make us happier or more mindful. I started understanding the meaning of this after a fight, when I got worried about the person being drunk and driving. And I realized that the fight we were having did not make any sense or had any value. I think that in this sense, thinking about death makes you aware of how much you care about people. However, I think it is still quite an extreme approach to give meaning to our lives and maybe not a healthy one, if practiced too often.

Realizing the fragility of life is indeed an efficient way to remind ourselves that we should take care of us and others while we can. So then what is my conclusion on happiness, after reading Singer’s book The Untethered Self? I think what marked me the most is the idea that happiness comes from within and that ultimately, this is what we should focus on. It is very easy to get distracted by the external factors of life, with all the pressure we are confronted to everyday. Do better. You have to succeed. You have to graduate, and find a job and make money and get married and have children and raise them good and succeed your marriage and…

And then you die. But until then, you have to make everything okay. I have been taught how to always thrive for more and never be satisfied. They called it ambition. Now, I would rather call it self-deception. What I will keep with me from this book is that we are the artisans of the way we perceive our lives. We can chose to eternally count the stars and to keep looking at ourselves in a mirror; or we can decide to understand that there is only so much that we can control in external factors and that there are important things to nurture inside. If yesterday is made of memories and the future is made of hopes, then the present moment is all we truly own, and we might as well allow ourselves to be peaceful with it.