#3: What are we actually afraid of?

Why dissecting our fears around death & dying is key to living a better life.

Ok, buckle your seatbelts. I promise not all newsletters will be so intense but we really must start with the thing that makes us turn away from thinking about death… 

FEAR

Fear is an amorphous feeling, filling every nook and cranny in our brain like a colorless, odorless gas. Before we know it, our thinking gets scrambled and our body follows suit with a rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, and a desire to run away. 

Let’s trap some of that gas in a beaker and examine it more closely — identifying which characteristics of the death conversation drive our logical minds into hiding and cause our reptilian instincts to take over. 

In a slim booklet titled simply, Death, writer Julian Barnes seeks to give shape and definition to our universal but rarely examined fear of death with a fundamental question:

“Are you afraid of dying or are you afraid of death?”

When I first read this, I was completely struck. I never considered breaking down my death fears to further understand them. 

I am firmly “afraid of dying”. Mr. Barnes, on the other hand, is “afraid of death”.

Intrigued, I presented this question to friends to see which side of the line they fell on.

Turns out, there are many reasons to fear death beyond just the two Barnes laid out... 

And I want us to look at a few right here, in the relatively safe context of a newsletter, as practice.

Practice doing something scary, practice staying in a balanced mental state at the same time, and practice learning what death has to teach us… rather than just running from it.

Because it turns out what we are afraid of in death tells us a lot about what we care about in life.

Fear of leaving a loved one behind to suffer

This fear came up a considerable amount in my conversations. It pivots the perspective from our own personal demise to its impact on those we love.

We live in terror of their broken hearts upon our death.

As a person who sits squarely in this camp, I can tell you acknowledging this fear has made me much better at prioritizing.

My kids are 100% the most important things in my life.

Connecting (however briefly) to my anxiety around leaving them behind always refocuses my life to ensure they are at the center, while enhancing my joy of spending quality time with them. 

Or even spent waiting to spend quality time with them!

Since both my kids are teenagers, I hang around in the kitchen to catch their comings and goings, snagging fifteen minutes together where I can.

I tell them I love them constantly – in person, in texts, in emails.

I find excuses (which they see right through) to pop into their rooms and share a fact they didn’t really need to know, or ask if a stray sock I found is theirs, then steal a kiss on the cheek and a hug.

I take them on trips to the mountains of Colorado, hike with them on our favorite Northern Virginia trails, and engage in chip-eating contests at our our local Tex-Mex joint.

We laugh a lot and make memories together. 

I am there for them. And I regret very little.

Fear of losing a loved one

And of course on the flip side of leaving someone we love behind is getting left behind ourselves… of facing life without our beloveds, our parents, our children, our friends. 

Prior to my husband’s death, I would have said this terrified me the most. In the last six years I have learned so much. I have walked through that hell and out of the other side to find something miraculous.

So while this fear is absolutely real (and I still have it myself for all the people I love), I know how profound its teachings can be.

I know how the reality (or thought experiment) of losing your beloved can open your eyes to a brand new way of being — one that reads more like a technicolor movie than the stereotypical life of a widow.

Purpose, connection, meaning.

Wonder, mystery, awe.

And a devotion to maximizing the here and now.

To making a difference in the lives of the ones I love — and the ones I don’t know at all. To rich conversations late at night, heartfelt letters sent for no reason, and real connection over shared vulnerabilities.

To the realization that, in one way or another, not even death can take away the love that we share.

We get to keep the love.

Just last week, I wrote a post about how my eyes opened to the miracles of life after Mike passed away — and how maybe we can learn these lessons an easier way.

Read or listen to “Why I wouldn’t trade away the grief” here.

Fear of being “responsible” for our own deaths and letting people down

This fear puzzled me when I first heard it. In a conversation with my friend Alex, he explained this fear means you could have prevented your death in some way (eat healthier, don’t ride unicycles) but didn’t. 

You didn’t do enough and now your family is left holding the bag. 

Alex is the primary breadwinner and provider, and when we spoke, it clicked for me that Alex and Mike shared similarities.

In a decade-old letter I found after Mike’s death, he was ruminating on what would happen if he died and whether he had done enough for us. “Maybe it is the good, ole provider instinct in me,” he wrote. 

Now, I’m not advocating anyone counteracts this fear by working more, stressing more, denying ourselves the good things of life more.

In fact, just the opposite.

What this fear has taught me, and what I believe it taught Mike as well – to use a phrase not often thrown around in common vernacular – is how to live honorably. 

How to embrace maturity in the metaphysical sense.

How to hold both the 30,000-ft perspective of generations to come and the effervescent impermanence of this moment, together, in your open hands. 

How to find the balance between your short-sighted desires (deep-fried oreos or cliff diving), your family’s long-term security, and the present moment.

I do not envy anyone wrestling with this three-way teeter-totter. But I can promise that this fear is a thorough teacher…

And if you learn the lessons it’s trying to teach, you will live a good life. Mike did.

Fear of not achieving what we want in life

Two very good friends, Paul and Andy, who don’t know each other and live an ocean apart, shared this fear with me. 

Both men are good eggs and high achievers with careers that are their passions. But they both feel there is so much more to do, to accomplish, and having their lives cut short before they’re “done” fills them with dread. 

They felt somewhat sheepish about it, but our fears are our fears. They are not here to be piled on with judgment. 

And to their surprise, I smiled as they each described it to me.

Because I saw how it was a pivotal factor in all they had done already…

This fear has the magic power of clarifying – making it abundantly clear what you actually care about versus what you think you should care about.

Maybe you don’t really care about making a million dollars, but you want your work to leave a legacy.

Maybe you aren’t lit up by the idea of traveling the world, but rather by the fantasy of building your dream home overlooking the sea.

Or maybe, similar to the first two fears, your biggest priority is organizing your life so you can spend more time with your family — celebrating with them when they succeed and supporting them when things don’t go their way.

This fear asks you, “What are the things you just don’t want to miss?”

And then it reminds you to take steps towards them today.

It reduces excuses about putting your lifelong dreams and goals first… because you just don’t know how long your life will be. 

For example, I got a kick in the pants to stop putting off and start embracing my two loves of travel and of marking milestones.

So I celebrated my 50th birthday (two years after Mike died) with a blowout trip to Patagonia – solo.

Bringing it home

In one of a thousand paradoxes around death, defining what we are actually afraid of helps us better understand the mystery of life.

Because it turns out many of us fear something more than dying — we fear not living.

To that end, in this post we’ve broken down numerous potential fears. We’ve looked at my examples and the examples of others. We’ve breached the walls of this terrifying topic without our reptilian brains forcing us to flee.

The only thing left?

To figure out what scares you about death. And how it motivates you to live a better life.

So put some of your ‘fear gas’ into a beaker for further examination. Take the next few days to be with your thoughts. Write them down.

Talk to people about it. Share this post, if it feels right, to get the conversation flowing.

---

---

Are there other fears that come to mind? Other reasons to take life by the reins, embracing the little control we actually have, and make the most of it – guided by our own values and priorities?

I look forward to reading anything you feel like sharing in the comments below.

With gratitude,

Sue