Earning one’s death

Yesterday I read James Baldwin’s 1963 book The Fire Next Time in one sitting. It’s short, comprised of a letter to his nephew and a single essay. If you haven’t read anything by Baldwin before (or if you have), I recommend it. He manages to write with elegance and profound force simultaneously, and his observations about race relations in America are as sharp as ever. He may as well have been writing last week, rather than 60 years ago.

Toward the end of the book, I came across a quote that stopped me in my tracks:

“Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.”

The truth of it was a revelation.

The death positive movement aims to help people think and speak about death and dying openly in order to better prepare for our inevitable end—and the main obstacle to that aim is fear. No one likes to think about dying.

But I hadn’t considered how many other prominent aspects of our lives—aspects that often stoke division and prejudice—are the result of that same fear. To be clear, I’m not saying it’s bad to practice religion or consider oneself a citizen of a nation. I don’t think Baldwin is, either. But I do think many people throw themselves into religion or nationalism in a futile effort to save themselves from obliteration. If my god is the strongest, or if my army is the strongest, then I cannot conceivably perish. And their fear-driven fervor often leads to cruelty or injury toward others. I cannot conceivably perish because I am on the team causing our enemies to perish. It’s as though death is a zero-sum game, a curse one can impose on someone else in order to avoid bringing it on oneself.

Which is, of course, absurd.

The first part of Baldwin’s quote aside, I was particularly struck by the second part—the idea that though death is an unavoidable fact, it’s also an opportunity. I’ve always felt I ought to live my life to the fullest since I won’t be around forever, but I’d never imagined death as something to be earned. That my passion for life might provide a better, more valuable death. Put another way: I’ve long felt that death gives life meaning, but not that life gives death meaning. This idea is very beautiful to me.

I hope to earn my death well, and I hope the same for you.