The sadness I sometimes feel is just a result of this straightforward problem. I want something that I can’t have. The simplicity of this frustration is almost immature.
I’m hardly alone with this problem. The tension between what we want and what is going to happen is universal. It’s not just me. Almost all of don’t want to die, and all of us are going to (probably). There’s just an immediacy to my situation – I’m going to die sooner than most, and I don’t want to that to happen.
The wise advise against wanting something you can’t have – Buddhists, Stoics, whoever else. We must accept what is inevitable in order to live peacefully, with equanimity and calm. What good would it do, they ask, to want something impossible? What good would it do to resist change? How fruitful is it to rebel against nature?
And death, if it is anything at all, is natural. All living things die. That is about as universal a truth as you can get, without stepping into the abstract. It is a concrete reality, unfailing in its comprehensiveness.
But that death applies to all is only a statistical reality. It is a claim about how things have been thus far. There’s a tree, the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine, that is said to be over 5000 years old. Is it mortal? It can certainly die, from natural disaster or human ill will. But if it’s left alone, will it die at all?
Some might say that death is written in the laws of nature, but that, of course, is not literally true. The laws of nature are not written anywhere, not on any stone tablet, not in the holy books, not on the side of a mountain, not in the stars, not anywhere. And those who think they know the laws of nature are, I say, fools – fools for thinking they can rest assured in their supposed wisdom, fools for accepting ideologies as facts, fools for stifling their own curiosity with cliches. And yes, here I am, calling the Buddha a fool, Marcus Aurelius a fool, Yoda a fool, and all other holy men fools.
But I too am a fool. I want never to die; I want to live forever. This is about as foolish a wish that one could have. Nobody lives forever. Fact number one.
Ken Chung 