Anyone taking Existentialism has probably heard, “You’re taking Existentialism? What a depressing class.” Sure sometimes, but the concept of life is already depressing, Existentialism is just trying to acknowledge it rather than ignore it for once. But anyway, I already suffered a little from death anxiety, so I thought I wouldn’t have much to lose by taking Existentialism. If anything, I took it because I thought it might make me a little less anxious about death.
A part of me thought I could move past a fear of death, embrace it even, if I acknowledged it enough. A course in Existentialism, in my mind, would be super rough emotionally to get through in this, but the finished product could be beautiful.
Imagine my disappointment when the “cure” for my death anxiety, is not embracing it at all, but avoiding it entirely.
Yes, this happened with a little piece of Nietzsche that my professor included in the book she wrote (it’s so great, it’s like having foot notes to the class). It was an excerpt with a character named Zarathustra, who explained philosophical things in a way that was written like a fairy-tale, not unlike Eastern philosophy. When people think they will decay and become nothingness when they die, Zarathustra told them,
“The complex of causes in which I am entangled will recur—it will create me again! I myself am part of these causes of the eternal recurrence. I shall return…not to a new life or a better life or a similar life: I shall return eternally to this identical and self-same life.”
Set everything aside, and imagine your thoughts if it were true. You die, sometime afterward the universe ends, then big bang goes again, dinosaurs, a few other things happen, and boom, you’re born again, as if you just took a long nap, to live your life again thinking it was the first time, without anything different.
It makes sense, if time is cyclical, and energy cannot be created or destroyed. We can’t really conceptualize what happens outside of time or the universe, so why not? This really makes sense to me.
I actually find a lot of comfort in this, but my Existentialist classmates disagreed. They found it monotonous, and like a punishment that drags on and on if your life won’t get any better the second, or 39,987,657,899,836,575,037,353,803rd time around.
I disagree. I don’t think it would be awful not getting to improve your life, because you wouldn’t be thinking of it that way. It would be the same. All your thoughts of things being new would be the same. You aren’t bored with your life right now, because you already remember what’s going to happen. It would be just like that. It would be just like *wide arm gestures* this all over again.
I find deep comfort in this. Think of nostalgia. Remember, feeling super awful when you realized you would never get to be a carefree little kid again? Hmm, guess what! You do! You get to build blanket forts again. You get to watch movies on VHS tapes with your dog that ran away ten years ago. You get to relive the day to day life you totally forgot the details of.
Oh, and remember that scary abbess that is the oblivion of not existing after death? Forget about it. The oblivion is only there if you aren’t. If this theory stands up, you will be as you are now, growing older (like you would have anyway) and then just starting over. It’s like not remembering what it was like to be asleep, or under anesthesia. One minute you are here, the next thing you know, you are here again. You begin with your first memory again. No need to fret about what happens in-between, because you are coming back.
Sure, maybe they’re an afterlife, and in that case we don’t have to worry about this. But if you find it hard to believe in one and still want to be comforted out of death anxiety, there it is.
The downside to this is that negative things have to repeat too. I will admit that this is troubling. People would be reborn into starvation, over and over again. People would face the most insufferable hours of their lives, over and over. I don’t really have a complete answer to this. If I’m allowed my own head cannon to add to this theory though, I’ll say that maybe the universe still needs some sort of balance. Maybe if someone lives an awful, short life, they get to be reborn into something much better. As the universe turns, they live one after the other.
Oh no, my existentialism class didn’t help me get over my death anxiety by getting me through it? I didn’t tumble into dark thoughts to arrive on the other side like a warrior with a mind-set that I cannot begin to imagine without the experience? I learned that to get over death anxiety, you basic convince yourself, you really don’t die? What a cop out! In a weird, almost masochistic way, I am disappointed.
Also, my theory is a pretty good way to think about life now. It turns the whole YOLO thing on its head. If you are going to relive this moment over and over again later, do you want to spend it doing something painful while thinking it’s a one-time thing? Do you want to spend it being sad over something you have the ability of letting go? Knowing that this isn’t the final round, don’t you want your life to be the best it can possibly be? A large factor of that is not worrying about death, which I think this philosophy, real or not real, absolutly helps with.
