Fear 101 |
Wednesday Mar 14 2007
A lot is written these days about aging gracefully. As we approach our senior years, we also become aware of a vague dread: we don’t want to acknowledge our fear of dying.
Evolution, while fitting us with an urgent will to survive and multiply, also equipped us with a powerful, instinctive fear of death. It is perfectly normal and natural to have a strong aversion to anything to do with it. Many people end their lives without ever addressing the issue. But if we choose to open up to this part of our genetic makeup, what is it really about? Does it relate to the course of illness leading to the body’s demise, to the process of dying itself, or to fear of what comes after? Or is it a combination of all three, with a host of other unnamed distresses tagging along?
Most of us dread things we anticipate could happen during our last days: loss of dignity and control, inability to communicate, confusion, warehousing in institutions, and having our dying prolonged by medical technology. We are fearful that our families will run out of energy to care for us, that we will be left alone, that we will be short of breath and in pain. We may feel our lives have become meaningless, that we are a burden. We may believe that the actual process of dying is painful and distressing. We may fear what will be done to our body once we are dead. We may worry about how our families will cope, whether we will meet a vengeful God, if our species will survive.
How can we deal with all our fears related to dying?
Our task is not to deny or eradicate them. Resisting our fears will only cause them to persist. We’re called, instead, to become more familiar with them, to develop a truce with them, to allow them into the fullness of our lives. Once we’ve acknowledged our fears, we can then turn them into expressions of hope. For example, fear of abandonment can become hope to have our loved ones around us; a dread of physical pain can become hope for effective symptom relief; a distaste for hospitals can become hope to spend our last hours in our own bed. The energy spent in pushing fear away may then be released for high-octane living.
By embracing our fears and defining our hopes, we will have taken a step towards wisdom, that ethereal quality we supposedly espouse as we mature.
What do you think?
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