Lies We Tell Ourselves

Without being aware of it, we get caught in obvious lies about how the world really works. What we can observe in the world can be so frightening that our mental model of the world–the fantasy that things are or will be different–can often replace our experience of it. When our model fails, we have a really hard time, and usually try to keep our model by making more rationalizations.

In my case, there are two lies I’ve spent most of my life unconsciously believing and making decisions around:

1. Death is not inevitable.
2. If death does happen, the more I “leave behind,” the more immortal I am.

Death is inevitable

For many years of my life, when people would say that death was inevitable, I was quick to respond that modern science is moving at a pretty rapid pace, and it isn’t impossible that they solve the aging problem before we reach old age. Eternal time, I argued, isn’t out of the reach of people. I further reasoned that the people who would have access to this would also have to have a lot of money, and plunged headfirst into figuring out how to make myself one of those people.

Let’s look at this a little more closely. So you’re sixty years old, you have a whole bunch of money, and scientists have figured out how to “reprogram” your body and genes so it doesn’t destroy itself. They’ve figured out the root of all diseases, old age, and brain decay. You take some pill once a day or go in for an injection once every couple months and bam, you’re twenty years old forever.

In the very unlikely scenario that that is true, at some point during your extended period of life you will still be subject to all manner of physical threats that cut off blood supply to your brain, the most obvious of which would be another global war that you get dragged into. At some point, the earth will no longer be able to support human life, either because someone pressed the button and knocked off the domino leading to a nuclear holocaust, or simply because the sun decided to become a red giant and end the game. And going out into space–to travel to another planet that can support human life–that is also going to be incredibly dangerous.

All it takes is for you to stop breathing for about fifteen minutes. And even if they solve that problem, there are an incalculable number of threats that still stand in the way of keeping the body and brain you inhabit from no longer being able to exist in the way you want it to.

Upon closer inspection, this assertion I was making is a castle made of sand. It is a house built on a completely rotted foundation. You can try to keep the sandcastle up, but it will not stay up.

The reason I didn’t examine it more closely was simple: deep fear. Fear of death is hardwired deep in us, and overcoming it is the always the challenge of the present moment. Accepting that you can’t stop it, at a core level, is what allows you to love the life you have, which is the present moment.

You are not what you leave behind

Fallacy number two is that I can leave behind a legacy. I can become famous, or make a lot of money, and as a result people will remember me after I die. And by remembering me, I’m still here in the world in a way “that matters.” Let’s take a look at this one.

I have read words that came from a long time ago. For example, The Tao Te Ching was written something like 2500 years ago by someone named Lao Tzu. Who is Lao Tzu? He was a guy who existed in China. He wrote a book and then he died.

Now think about this a minute–you might say he left behind a legacy. You might say that because you’re reading his book, you know him. And indeed, there is a connection. But how is that connection any different from the fact that you are breathing in particles that he breathed out 2500 years ago? Or that you walk on ground that contains particles that once comprised his body? Why is it that words, coming from his mind, contain so much more significance than drinking water that was once urine he peed out?

It’s pretty simple in my opinion: because it’s something I like, and that I’m paying attention to. I like reading his words, they help me feel like I have more control and understanding in the world. But the language he used wasn’t the same language we use today, and in my case it has been translated by someone living now into a language I actually know and understand.

When you read Lao Tzu’s words, you don’t know Lao Tzu, you’re reading something that’s dead, and not interacting with him while he was alive. You attribute a name, which are words, with a man, but it is not the man. He left something behind, yes, but we all leave things behind every second, with the air we breathe, the food we eat, the words we say to other people, the movements we make with our bodies. Even light particles bouncing off of our skin are affected by how we live in the world, and those particles bang into other ones and affect how the rest of the world works. Leaving words or something else behind is a mirage because you like it, and you are paying more attention to that than these other facts, which are right in front of your face.

Finally, going back to the great equalizer that is time. The human race will not live forever. At some point the universe will stop supporting its form, and it will rejoin the essential oneness of it all. Even if you leave behind something attached to your name that lasts a hundred thousand years, in the one hundred thousand and first year, when the human race is extinct, even the words you left behind and the name which isn’t you will go right along with them.

What does all this mean for someone living in the world today?

1. Stop hoarding and obsessing over money beyond a reasonable effort.
2. Let go of your status, your image, and the idea of your legacy.
3. Love the Eternal Now, whatever pleasant or unpleasant thing it presents you with.