Not Scared Of Dying
74
If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you aren’t afraid of dying,
there is nothing you can’t achieve.
Trying to control the future
is like trying to take the master carpenter’s place.
When you handle the master carpenter’s tools,
chances are that
you’ll cut yourself.
Tao Te Ching by Lao-tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell
Fear-of-death arrives on center stage the pivot point in the course of our human story. It is suggestive to read how scholars, Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall translate the central thought of verse 74.
If the people are really afraid of dying
Then there will always be an executioner.
A dispassionate assessment of this world, and of my life indicates that change is the rule. Everything changes and nothing remains. – is said to have been said by old Heraclitus around 400 BCE. A more sobering thought could be not entertained than that. A silence devoid of comment is the appropriate response. One bows to acknowledge the temporary, ever changing, fleeting nature of things. The news is good and bad. Good because the natality of things is asserted, there’s room for what has never before existed. What possibilities might arise, I hear laughter of children at play in the park?
Though news is not-so-good because what is, is passing away. Only a memory-image remains of the Virginia Twister Dodge, thundering wheels up, from a starting line launch, the echo rolling into the pine tree woods of the 16 year old version of myself at a North Carolina dragstrip. In time it was 1965. My high school sophomore-self is gone, with that event and the joy of those few seconds is gone, forever. The human experience is tragic. There’s no way around it.
The terror of the pull of dissolution, or the absence of this fear is the pivot point of my story, and of your story. Indeed one could argue, such is what drives all of history. To what extent do I accept my own demise? Perhaps in my bones, growing old, losing year by year the bloom of youth and of strength is unacceptable to me, and much time and money is dedicated to full-out denial. I’d have a lot of company among my fellow Americans.
The translation rendered by Ames and Hall seem prescient at present. We meet the fulfillment of expectations, just not as we imagined. The “if” is a pivot point. When there’s widespread fear of losing, of dying, an executioner arises: someone has to play the part, – a natural born killer.
What else but this tune by Blood, Sweat & Tears – And When I Die released in 1969 can be our anthem of aspiration.
2 thoughts on “Not Scared Of Dying”
Those of us who have reached an age where the years ahead are limited feel the tug of the earth below. As much as I may have considered death when I was younger, it remained at bay, somewhere out there. That “somewhere” is now around the corner, palpable in its nearness. “Time’s a-wastin’” as the comic character Snuffy Smith used to say, and so the desires to produce, to create, to make a difference become compressed into a narrow box.
As I do at times I offer an old poem of mine that seems apropos.
Crossroads
The young man speeds along
the black-topped, yellow-striped road
as if he were racing against his soul.
Only when the wind rips at
the smooth skin of his unlined faced
can he straddle the line,
gaze into the distance
and glimpse the darkness of mortality.
With a foot slammed on the pedal,
his heart pounds with unrestrained glee
as he shoves his middle finger
into the face of death and screams,
“Catch me if you can.”
The old man motors along,
cautiously navigating the care-worn street,
afraid, fearful that time itself might break.
He grips the wheel
as if pinning it to the dashboard,
checks his rearview mirror,
fully aware of the cloaked specter,
following at a polite distance,
who will, in time, fulfill his inevitable duty.
So the old man does not hurry.
Life has sped past in a blur
and he knows what is waiting.
There is no need to rush.
His destination can wait.
The poem is persuasive. In my own case, I understand better now, that I’ve nothing to lose, nothing at all. Everyone dies one way or another. Though, I’ve learned how to be more measured in my commitments by comparison to my youth, I think I am also less likely to hold back. Everyone dies. It seems we choose our manner of life, which surely is linked to how one dies. I’d prefer to die on my feet, pressing forward to a better future for everybody – than to just fade away.