Death — The Ultimate Deadline

Deadlines help us get things done, and there's no greater — or more certain, or more final — deadline than death. Deadlines get us going, get us moving, motivate us to do things sooner rather than later.

Parkinson's Law states that work either expands or contracts to fill the time available. Death lets us know that there's only a certain amount of time available — the span of a lifetime — in which to get done whatever we want to do.

Of course, none of us knows how short that time will be, but most of us know it's not going to be longer than, say, another 100 years. So, whatever we want to achieve during our lifetime, we had better start today.

There are some who consider both death and deadlines bad. Death is neither good nor bad, it merely is. It is a fact of life, like gravity. ("Gravity isn't easy, but it's the law.") We can use death for ourselves or against ourselves. The choice is ours.

As Professor Sydney Hook pointed, out, "The fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present." The first step in seeing death as an ally of accomplishment is to remove the childhood fears we have concerning death.

Children learn about death in a limited (and limiting) way. They see someone (or, in the case of a pet, something) go from warm, active, moving and alive, to cold, inactive, motionless and dead. This death stuff does not look very interesting.

Children then see the reaction adults have to death. Although grown-ups may say things like, "He is with God," or "She is at peace at last," the emotional attitudes of adults (weeping, moaning, wailing) indicate that death is not a welcome guest in anyone's home.

The last straw for children concerns what happens to bodies. If a body is buried, the child thinks death must be eternal blackness, darkness and aloneness. If a body is cremated, the child thinks death is fire, flames and pain.

For children, asking adults about death is about as useful as asking adults about sex — the adults become uncomfortable, and give conflicting answers to simple questions they don't seem to believe themselves.

It's little wonder, then, that many children decide, "Death is not a good thing, and I won't think about it any more." And most people don't. Death is such a taboo in our culture that we don't even talk about the fact that it's a taboo. We pretend it doesn't exist.

This is too bad, because there are only three beliefs about death in our culture — none of them bad.

Life is purely biological, and when we die, we're dead. There's nothing bad in this view of death — we simply are not, so there's nothing to worry about. As Einstein explained, "The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."

After life, there is heaven or hell through all eternity. If this is one's belief about what happens after death, then there's nothing to worry about, either. Heaven is for good people and hell is for bad people, and who but a good person would believe in heaven and hell? So, if you believe, then a place in heaven is already prepared for you.

We keep coming back, life after life, until we learn all we need to know. This, too, is not a view of death to fear. Death is no more significant than moving from one grade to another in the same school, or from one house to another within the same town. We may not know all that will happen there, but that's part of the fun. "Life is a great surprise," Vladimir Nabokov said, "I do not see why death should not be an even greater one."

When questioned about life and death, almost all adults will describe one of these beliefs, or a close variation. As none of these views of death are bad nor inherently scary, it's clear that the views of death formed as a child still control the emotional reactions many adults have toward death.

Many believe that young people have no sense of death; that they live their lives as though they will live forever. This may be true in some cases, but only because they have not been taught the inevitability of death, and the value of the interval between now and the inevitable. One's own mortality need not come as a shock later in life; it can be a fact of life, taken into consideration in all of life's choices.

When seen clearly as a deadline, death can be used as a tool for doing. Some of the positive uses for this tool include:

1. When we know "our days are numbered," we see that we can only accomplish a certain amount in this lifetime. This stresses the importance of choice in the planning and living of life.

2. Death encourages action. We only have so much time left, so let's get going.

3. Death encourages risk. The downest of the downside in any risk is death. Since we're going to die any way, why not take the risks that make life more exciting, enjoyable and, well, alive? Near San Francisco, a group of people with AIDS gather regularly for sky diving, rock climbing and all those things they wanted to do but at one time considered "too dangerous." The name of their organization? The What-The-Hell-Do-We-Have-To-Lose-Anyway? Club. "Life," as Guy Bellamy reminds us, "is a sexually transmitted disease."

4. Death reminds us how much we owe the past and the future. Those who went before us knew they wouldn't be here forever, and yet they left us a rich legacy. We, too, have many gifts to leave the generations yet unborn. Death says we only have a certain number of years in which to appreciate the past and to leave our gift for the future. When Isaac Asimov, who has written hundreds of books, was asked what he would do if he had only six months to live, he responded, "Type faster."

Death, for the doer, is the ultimate reason to do it — and to enjoy it — now.

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