He believed that death meant the end of both body and soul, which brought comfort to some of those who were afraid of punishment in the afterlife.

He felt that dying actually presents nothing to fear; it means the end of existence, not the possibility of hell and damnation.

This view challenges many religious warnings of eternal punishment in the fires of hell.

Epicurus. Hans Zwitzer. Flickr.

I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not too distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome, Pandora’s box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.

IRVIN D. YALOM

Yalom felt that ‘the idea of death saves us.’

What he meant by this was that an awareness of the reality of death means that we often work at making our lives better and more meaningful:

“Learning to live well is learning to die well.”

He calls this process ‘mindfulness of being,’ an awakening. The more we live our life to the full, the less we will dread the inevitability of death.

He quotes Zorba the Greek:

“Leave death nothing but a burnt out castle.”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” 

Henry David Thoreau

 

‘Rippling.’

We don’t actually fear death, we fear that no one will notice our absence, that we will disappear without a trace.

TS Eliot

In psychotherapy, Yalom’s notion of ‘rippling’ is very helpful, especially when people are afraid of being totally forgotten, their memory wiped out by death.

This term refers to the way in which our influence on others and on the world spreads out in ripples.

It means that we inevitably leave something of ourselves behind and pass it on, something that will continue to ripple outwards after our death.

“Attempts to preserve personal identity are always futile. Transiency is forever. Rippling, as I use it, refers instead to leaving behind something from your life experience; some trait; some piece of wisdom, guidance, virtue, comfort that passes on to others, known or unknown.” Yalom.

Relationships With Others.

Sharing one’s fears with good and trusted friends is most often a helpful way of managing our feelings about death and impermanence.

Yalom says that ‘Loneliness greatly increases the anguish of dying.’

‘Existential isolation,’ an awareness that we are ultimately alone and face death alone, increases with age. Empathising with another, sharing feelings, can bring some relief:

“Sheer presence is the greatest gift you can offer anyone facing death (or a physically healthy person in a death panic.)”  Yalom.

Knowing that others have such fears can be reassuring; we are not so alone. Reflecting upon our lives, our trials and tribulations, as well as our joys, can be a rewarding experience if we can self-disclose to trusted others.

Then, perhaps, our fears of impermanence becomes shared, and less lonely.

“For while directly we say that it [the length of human life] is ages long, we are reminded that it is briefer than the fall of a rose leaf to the ground.”

Virginia Woolf

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