We're All Going to Die

And that needs to be ok

“My dad died and my grandad died and my great grandfather before him, I dunno, I think he probably died. I come from a long line of death” -Norm Macdonald

“Our bond is eternal. And so is love. God is inside you, all around you” -Sturgill Simpson

I was recently, unfortunately, made aware of a guy named Bryan Johnson. Maybe you’ve heard of him. I’m not sure how this info made it’s way into my brain and I wish it hadn’t, but Johnson is some kind of tech billionaire who’s apparent goal is to never die, or at least to extend his life indefinitely. He’s spending millions of dollars a year in a Sisyphean quest for perpetual youth. Among other things he harvests his sons blood and injects himself with it. As far as I can tell, he’s mostly succeeded in making himself look more like a “gray” (or at least a hybrid). Apparently he’s not the only insane rich person attempting something like this, and I would hazard a guess that we’ll see more of this kind of craziness as inequality widens and the world becomes a scarier place.

It’s all of a piece with the recent phenomenon of Billionaire Bunkers, the rise of ultra-rich people building (allegedly) apocalypse-proof underground lairs in remote locations, an attempt to insulate themselves and their loved ones from the worst case consequences of their very own actions. How many masters of war, Lockheed-Martin execs, with investment accounts stuffed off the sale of WMD’s, begin spending them down in an effort to hide from nuclear apocalypse? How many oil company profiteers will flee the effects of climate change? Do the tech billionaires wake in the night from fitful dreams about zombie hordes of unemployed and underemployed, marching, marching, and make a note to invest in more security? At some point wouldn’t they all be stupid not to?

And then you have the Elon Musk’s and Jeff Bezos’s of the world, intent on abandoning this earth for humanity’s next home. Convinced that they will outlive the usefulness of this earth to our species (or maybe it’s the other way around). No word yet on if you and I are invited.

Bryan Johnson with his son, and his sons plasma. Normal stuff.

All of this would seem silly if it didn’t make me so deeply sad. The truth is obvious: we are all going to die. Even the very rich among us. Even the very healthy. There is no way to spend your way out of it. And when the bombs drop I suppose there are a few billionaires in remote bunkers who can insulate themselves from the apocalypse for a few weeks, months, years. But even that, of course, is a temporary fix. After days or years of eating caned food in their artificially lighted ark, they, to, will pass away. The additional question must be asked, if you are the only people to survive the apocalypse, and you have completely severed all connection to the outside world, how valuable is survival truly? Can all the books and television reruns in the world provide you meaning for a lifetime? Solitary confinement is considered a cruel punishment for a reason. And, again, survival is a temporary state. We’re all gonna die.

Now, one could argue that this is nothing more than the strange proclivities of the uber-wealthy with too much free time. And you’d be right. These people are sickos and freaks, out of touch with reality in a way that allows them to do this sort of stuff without anyone telling them it’s stupid, insane, pointless.

But we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss them. Many of us regular people are trying to live forever in our own way too, even if it’s less ostentatious. I think here of the crunchy hippy dippy vegan types and their commitment to avoiding “processed foods” at all costs, as well as the Joe Rogan bro’s of the world perfecting their gym routine and testosterone replacement regimens. I have friends in both of these groups. I think of people I know and know of who should have retired long ago, who have the money to do so, clinging to power and careers, deathly afraid that if they let go and relax they’ll instantly croak. I think of the thriving supplement industry, ginko biloba, fish oil, CoQ10. Reservetrol.

I also think of the contestants my wife and I watch on reality shows, people in their late twenties and early thirties, young by any standards, young young young, impossibly young, young beyond our wildest dreams, naturally attractive and fit, the world in the palm of their hands and yet full of face freezing chemicals (in the case of the women) and steroids (in the case of the men). It’s ironic that the Botox makes them look permanently afraid. They are afraid. We are all so afraid of death, and by extension of aging, of becoming old, fat, wrinkled, unattractive. Someone unrecognizable to ourselves. But, as a comedian once said, would you rather look like a forty year old human or a 25 year old reptile?

It strikes me as no coincidence that the mainstreaming of these attempts to buy or “innovate” ourselves into immortality has coincided with the decline of religion as a common aspect of mainstream life in America. Of course, humans have always sought immortality in all its forms. I took an incredible class on in this phenomenon in college, all the way back in 2009. But this is something new. These rich people aren’t thinking about how to continue their legacy through their children or their work. They’re literally trying to beat death and become immortal. And I look around and see many of us regular people sticking our heads in the sand too, at worst fighting to defeat our mortality and at best refusing to face it.

Death is batting 1.000. So is aging. At some point we will look in the mirror and not like what we see. A few extra inches around the middle, a few too many gray hairs in our beards. At some point, there will be things that we used to be able to do that we can no longer do. The changes will come slowly at first and then faster. It will happen to even the beautiful and fit and intelligent among us. Our mortality, the transience and impermanence of our lives should be one of our great uniters. It should bring us together in a great quest for meaning, for purpose. Our universal human need to be part of something bigger than ourselves. But as our institutions crumble and we retreat from each other this quest becomes more quixotic as well as more lonely.

The problem is that a search for meaning, the type of meaning that makes life worth living, but also makes us ok with letting go of it when the time comes, can not be conducted as a solo venture. It can only be done in relationship. Relationship with other people and relationship with that great, universal consciousness, the ocean on which all of us are waves, rising, cresting, receding. The waves disappear in the blink of an eye but the ocean, in it’s incomprehensible vastness remains. Some of us call it God.

I myself was raised agnostic and fitfully found my way to faith as an adult. A long strange, confusing but ultimately meaningful process. The place I find myself in now is some messy amalgamation of Catholicism (my roots, and my home, still), my wife’s humanist and love-first form of Protestantism, and the hippie-dippie, back-to-the-woods-mother-God-moon-maiden naturalist deism that, being raised where I was by the parents that I was, is my birthright. It’s a good headspace I find myself in and I’m more comfortable with my place in the universe than I have been in a long time, possibly ever. But that’s not to say that I’m sure I’m right. Far from it. Many paths, etc.

It is to say that we should all seek out some sort of spiritual practice, if for no other reason than to get comfortable with our mortality.

In all my work with churches, and through my wife’s work as a pastor, I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in their eighties, a fair amount in their nineties, and even a few centenarians. They’re overwhelmingly kind people, and health conscious, of course. But what has most impressed me, especially with the very elderly ones, is their calm and acceptance of their limitations. I remember talking to Russ, a man in his nineties at my wife’s old parish, who had had quite a life. Now, of course, things had slowed down for him. But he told me: I can still sit and have coffee with friends and talk, and I can still go to church. And I enjoy those things. He wasn’t raging against his limitations, rather enjoying the things he could do. And he took great interest in the people around him, their lives, their stories. He enjoyed being with people. He was still listening, still learning. When he passed away, quickly and peacefully, years later in his late nineties, I thought “that’s the way to do it”.

But his sense of peace wasn’t created internally through sheer force of will. He had cultivated, over decades and decades, a relationship with God and relationships with friends, family, fellow worshippers that gave him meaning but also helped him ease into aging. He was content with his life, and he had a community around him that kept him content. And he had spent years, through his faith, grappling with his mortality and the changing world around him.

Russ is someone who has left quite a legacy. I thought about him last week as my family was at a family camp on Crystal Lake that he had started, all the way back in the sixties. People are still coming to that camp and finding great joy and from it, including me and my family. God willing, they will continue to do so for decades to come. Long after myself or anyone else is around to remember who started it. Long after his name ceases to be spoken. And I think he’d be ok with that. More than ok.

I’ve found that the old people that are the happiest and healthiest have in common two things more than any other: an acceptance of the aging process, and strong connection to a social fabric. Relationships keep us young, and acceptance keeps us content. These are the lessons I’ve learned.

But I don’t think they can be learned alone. When I say everyone should cultivate a spiritual practice I certainly don’t mean everyone should be Christian. There’s room in this beautiful world for all of us: Christian, Muslim, Jewish all the way to Pagans and Daoists, even the Aetherius Society. There is also room for us as individuals to shape our own spiritual practice, our own ways to touch the vast and the divine, outside the realm of organized religion. But I also don’t think doing your crossword puzzles with a cup of coffee on Sunday morning counts. Nor does, unfortunately, a walk in the woods. At least not any old walk in the woods These are nice pursuits, but they are solitary. In a quest for meaning, we need others to both help us along the way, and to hold us accountable to our values.

An Abandoned Church near Mesick, MI

And we need others to help illuminate the beauty and purpose in the world, to help us be our best selves, and to help us appreciate the holiness of the small moments, the moments we will look back on as we slip into the stream at 107. All things are fleeting, and the less permanent they are the more beautiful. Think of the moment just before the sun sets at Lake Michigan, when you find yourself and the people around you getting quiet and reverential. Think of the last, ecstatic, extended note at a concert, as you hug the person next to you who you didn’t know two hours ago, drenched in confetti and beer. Think of the moment of baptism, when you come up from under the water, back to the world and to the embrace of your loved ones. Or the moment you said “I do”. These moments aren’t, couldn’t ever be, were not meant to be, lasting. Neither were our lives. But no one can say that makes them less beautiful, powerful, meaningful. Quite the opposite.

This summer my son learned to ride a bike. No training wheels. For weeks he had been practicing with me holding on to the seat. “DON’T let go daddy. DO NOT let go”. One day, right before it was time for him to start getting ready for bed, I let go anyway. And he took off down our dirt road like a bat out of hell. I had to tell him I wasn’t holding on anymore and when he realized it he started going even faster. Maybe that’s a metaphor, but it also actually happened.

My wife came home late, and I let him stay up to show her. We stood in the street, as the last of the late evening sunlight streamed golden through the leaves, hot and sweaty in the humidity, with an arm around each other, as our five year old peddled away from us saying “See mommy! See!!??” In some small way he wouldn’t ever be the same, and in some small way neither would we. I wasn’t surprised to see my wife wipe away a tear as she cheered him on. I felt the same way. All I could say was “wow huh?”.

All of this is transient. All of this is fleeting. Even us, especially us. We have to make our peace with that, make sense of that, as best we can.

The easiest way to do it is with others. I know for a fact that I have many friends and acquaintances, mostly my age and younger, who are hungry for a spiritual life and would admit to having a God shaped hole in their hearts (not in those words), but they don’t know how to start building it, and they feel embarrassed. If you’re one of these people, here’s my agitation to you. Take a small step, this doesn’t happen all at once. Go to google maps and search for houses of worship near you. Find one that looks interesting. Show up for their service. I bet you will be treated with kindness. Worst thing that can happen is you’ll hear some shit you don’t care for, and you simply won’t come back the next week. That, in itself, can be clarifying. Best case scenario is it’s the first step toward community and meaning.

Or if that’s not appealing take that walk in the woods. But no headphones, no smart phone. Just your thoughts. Try talking to God, the universe, in your head. Take some time for intentional reflection in this backwards society where that’s seen as impossible or crazy. But don’t just do that. When you’re done, seek out someone you trust and love and talk with them about it. Maybe over coffee or a beer. Be brave enough to have a deep conversation with people you care about. Trust them enough to overcome your fear of being cheesy. Reject irony, if only for an hour.

If you commit yourself to confronting the flimsiness of of all this head on and with courage, through reflection, community, and an intentional spiritual practice, you have to take that first step. And eventually, like me, you might have an experience with the profound. I’ve had a few moments where the veil thins a bit, and I think you will too. If so, maybe you, like me, will come closer to finding what you truly believe, and be comforted by it.

Here’s where I’ve landed. In a world of transience and chaos, in a life that is confusing and fleeting, where all we are promised is that that the things we care about will eventually be torn from us; the one thing that lasts, that will outlive us all, is the most important thing, the only thing that matters: Love.

Of course I don’t know the truth about any of this for sure. You can never be certain. I’m probably talking to myself. I turn 37 tomorrow.