“What is something you are afraid of?” I ask.
“Death.” He says. No further explanation. Very matter of fact. And very final, and not dramatic at all. I leave it alone, but it starts a chain reaction in my brain that I cannot help. Truly, what is it we are most afraid of? If we are honest with ourselves? As I’ve said before, what drives people to do the things they do, live the way they do, act the way they do, is what they fear. In some form or another I truly believe every action, if traced back to its true root, is fear based. We are fearful, fight or flight animals after all.
But I don’t think death is really the fear. The act of dying? No, I don’t think that is the fear. We know pain, if there is any, will be short lived for the most part and there are chemical releases at the time of death that soothe the conscious brain into not existing. That is fact. So, the actual act of dying I don’t think many people are afraid of that. I also believe it goes a little deeper than just the “is there life after death” question. I think for the most part, the large majority of humanity believes very strongly in some sort of life after death. So, if we believe, as we say we do, then there is nothing to fear. So then why, is death the number one thing people say they are afraid of when I ask the simple question, “what is one fear you have?”.
I don’t think we fear death. I think we fear being forgotten.
From the first hand print on a cave wall, we as human beings want someone to know we were here, and that some how that mattered. We are “pack” animals, and to be alone was, from a survival standpoint, very deadly. Our need for other people is based in survival, not love. And we seek a partner, not for love, but security and someone to know our story. It’s why we write, create art…. We want our story to matter. We want someone, somewhere to remember us. So that our time here was not in vain. It’s almost a desperate need to have a witness to our life.
So much so, that we will stay in bad relationships for far too long, sometimes forever… to still fill that need of someone in our life. Someone to know, every day, our stories. So that we don’t feel like a ghost walking the earth. If a tree falls and no one can hear it, did it make a sound? If I cried today, and no one knew, did my pain matter?…
The idea that ghosts haunt the living because they have something left undone is intriguing to me. How do you save a soul, trapped between worlds? In short… someone, a medium… conveys their message. They need to know they are forgiven, or they need to tell someone they loved them, or they need someone to know what really happened to them. They need to be seen. Remembered. Everything we crave here. A ghost can be trapped for eternity between worlds if no one hears them. Lost souls… forgotten. Even in the after life it is not death we can’t get past, it is being forgotten.
“We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean?…You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness’.” -Beverly Clark, Shall We Dance
That is what we crave. That is what we need. Love is secondary in this human condition. What we fear is not death. We fear
Stay Wild
-Jana Leniger
Jana Out West
10/18/2019
