A Brief Glance Towards the Sun
On wintery Friday nights, (considering the current climate) I’d like to think that they are best spent catching up with friends over video or voice calls. Perhaps have a few drinks with housemates, celebrating another end of a busy work week. Maybe even unwind with someone close to them, perhaps over a few episodes of Netflix’s La Casa de Papel.
Well, watching La Casa de Papel was something that I was doing earlier this evening. Sitting next to my sister while her partner is connected on the phone, who is around 2800 kilometers away. He had been teasing her by telling her about events that may or may not be spoilers, and she would respond with “I’m going to sell you off to my friend for a price worthy of only a dozen cimol.” (A popular snack in Indonesia of Sundanese origin. Maybe around AUD$0.50 for twenty of them?).
As the characters in the show discuss the art of using the enemy’s own forces to their benefit, I turned away for a moment and for some reason, felt drawn to one of the three books that were next to me. I could have picked up Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, or Isabel Allende’s A Long Petal of the Sea, but instead I picked up Irvin D. Yalom’s Staring at the Sun. Perhaps I was drawn to this book because only a week ago, my psychologist recommended this to me when I spoke to him about death anxiety.
However, from this point on, I must warn you that I will be discussing death and thoughts of death. You might look at this sentence and scoff, but this warning is not meant for you: it is meant for those who, like me, lie awake at night out of fear of the eternal nothingness that death brings.
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Death has been a prominent driving force behind why I like to surround myself with work, with conversations, with hobbies. Death anxiety was quite the significant contributor: the thought that death is something that might happen, and the fact that I can never know when or where — it terrifies me. It cripples me like nothing I had ever known before. As a young adult, even though I realise that there are plenty other issues that does render me helpless and is malicious to my mental health, nothing comes as close to death anxiety.
“I can’t help but think that I should end it myself.” At ten years old, I remember writing in my diary. “That I should be in control of at least, that. If I cannot control anything else, then I want to control how I leave the world.”
That same year, I also remembered praying. But instead of for my own good grades or health, I was begging God to promise me that He would give my grandparents more time. I even told him that I was willing to give my own years for them. I thought that it didn’t matter what should happen to me, because I truly believed that I would not be able to cope if I were to lose them.
“…Have you ever lost a parent?” I remember asked my psychologist. “If you have, can you tell me how you coped with it?”
That question came from the death anxiety once COVID-19 lockdowns started in the country that my parents are residing in. I began noticing how old my parents looked, especially mother. I noticed that because she couldn’t go to the beauty salon to get her hair dyed, her white hairs began to show.
As someone who is not close to either parental figures, this incited an emotional turmoil inside of me — part of me couldn’t care less, but part of me is afraid. Afraid of the future. Afraid for them.
What exacerbated the emotional turmoil was the thought that they were growing older and while it had always crossed my mind, I had always managed to dismiss it before death anxiety could creep up on me.
And then I began fearing for their future. For my sister. For my grandparents. For my partner and my friends. For the first time in years, I wasn’t thinking of my own mortality and I was overwhelmed by the thought of how the Reaper might come to everyone else first, leaving me all alone, flipping through the pages of my earthly story in solitude.
“Unfortunately, no.” He told me. “So I am sorry to say I can’t really answer that question.”
I apologised to him, and asked him if he had ever wondered how people dealt with grief. If, perhaps, there was a hidden manual to dealing with grief that I could get some sort of early access to. Anything at all to help me prepare.
“…I mean, even though I realise that the process of grief is different for everyone, I still wanted something to go by, y’know?” I laughed it off. “What people do to deal with their grief is something that’s personal. How they cope… everyone copes differently.”
“Where is the manual for this?” I continued, though it was more of an attempt to bring levity to the situation. But the question still plagued me: how do people deal with death, death anxiety, and the grief that follows loss?
“Have you ever heard of the book Staring at the Sun by Irvin Yalom?” He followed up.
I told him no. Then he told me about how the book discusses death and the anxieties that followed.
“Give it a try.” He told me. But I didn’t need to be persuaded any further. I was already sold when he told me about the central theme of the book.
When I got my hands on the book, I was excited to read the discussions surrounding it, and was even more compelled to go through the pages knowing that Yalom discussed Epicurus and Socrates.
But the further I got into the book, the more I feel a familiar dread rising in my stomach. One that claws at my heart and leaves an unseen but huge scar, one that tugs at my heartstrings like gravity to paper plane, it is the exact same one that once left me crying under the covers of my room at 3:30 AM.
The more he spoke of his patients and described how their death anxiety came to be and why it gripped them so strongly, the more I got scared.
One patient in particular, Julia, lost a friend and became hypochondriacal. The smallest bit of pain threw her into an anxiety attack.
Then I felt my eyes water, knowing full well why that was relatable to me. In 2016, I lost a much younger friend, and the death anxiety only expanded in size, leading to the start of a series of anxiety attacks that turned my life upside down. Then I became obsessed with controlling what foods I ate and how much I should push myself when I exercised, though unfortunately this led to a series of health complications for a while.
Then I began thinking of my sister, who I was growing closer to in the past few weeks, and found myself fearing that I would lose her.
Yalom mentions how Epicurus believes that our fear of death is what holds us back from the pleasures of life. As much as I agree with Epicurus, I did not find the thought comforting. I found it ignorant. But Epicurianism was not made to cater to myself. So I continued on.
Then, Yalom reminded me of how Socrates found comfort in his belief that the soul is immortal and he could continue to find wisdom eternally in Elysium with like-minded philosophers.
Growing up, I was always dismissive of that specific idea in his Platonic dialogue Phaedo. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t quite a believer of the afterlife, or perhaps it was because of how the idea influenced Christian ideas of heaven and hell.
But this time around, I found myself in a conversation. One with myself.
“Maybe I could believe in that too.”
Only to be stopped by the cynic.
“But you know he’s wrong and there’s nothing left. It’s silly. Imagine if people knew that you believed that.”
It’s how these conversations with myself go. Something hopeful, dashed by the cynic. Sometimes it persists, but often it is how it ends.
It was just that this time, something fought back. With persistence.
“So what if he’s wrong? Maybe there isn’t. But the whole idea of coping — isn’t it about finding what works for you, what helps you get through it? So what if people find that idea silly, or even pointless?”
At the thought, I paused in front of the microwave (Much to my sister’s dismay, who later poked me in the stomach).
“Isn’t it about what’s right for you, what helps you cope, instead of what others see as correct?”
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Of course, I know that there are consequences that come with that sentence. Coping differs from one another, and these mechanisms may be dangerous — In fact, some of them might not be healthy. But I’ve come to think about how the cynic may not provide me the comfort I need this time around.
Grief, I’ve learned, is like a ball in a box. How it got there, who knows. Perhaps it was forcibly pushed inside. But I do know that when you experience grief, it expands. When it is an intense one, it pushes with force against the inner surface of the box. Your whole being feels it, and you mourn. It hurts.
But over time, the ball can become smaller and smaller. Though the small ball may thud against the box occasionally, digging up memories and feelings that you thought you had forgotten or had gotten over. You will re-experience the grief, and the pain and tears may come strolling right back.
How the ball deflates is what I’ve been seeking for myself. How have I coped through the losses I’ve experienced? How will I cope through the losses I will experience? What if I can’t cope, and it all becomes too much? What is the right coping mechanism that I can use?
But I must admit that I have spent far too much time focusing on what coping mechanism will elicit approval from others. I’d forgotten that the human psychology is an extremely subjective matter, where what works for one may not work for the other. Even if it does, it will not be the exact same method. There will be small differences that may help you cope better, depending on who you are.
I’d failed to note this for myself. It’s advice I’ve always given to friends, but failed to take for myself.
Of course, it is not that straightforward. Again, some coping mechanisms are indeed unhealthy and may pose risks. Not all coping mechanisms can be healthy.
But is it not an important first step that I realise that, and carry it with me when I must find the coping mechanism that fits me?
As I ask that, the cynic in me is quiet. Even if I do know that we both have arguments and counter-arguments to offer to one another.
But for the time being, we are both quiet.
As I turn on the TV and proceed to tune in to another episode of the Great British Bake Off, I tell myself that I should take a break from thinking of death. Actually, I do deserve a break. It’s not something with a black and white answer, and even if there is a black and white answer I won’t be finding it anytime soon from the comforts of my grey couch.
