Contemplating Mortality
“This is such a brush with mortality, difficult to parse at 14.”
So said the father of a 14-year-old boy who shared with his son one of the last helicopter tours of New York City before that helicopter plunged into the Hudson River this past week, killing a Spanish couple, their three young children, and the helicopter’s pilot. Earlier news stories have described the crash itself; this article in the New York Times describes the reactions of families who toured the city in that helicopter shortly before the fatal crash.
There are moments like this one when people are fully aware of just how close they are to death. Sean Carroll begins his book A Series of Fortunate Events with the story of a man who narrowly missed his flight one September morning, only to learn a bit later in the morning that the flight he intended to take was one of those flown into the World Trade Center. Many of us are aware that if circumstances had been just slightly different on a particular day, we or someone close to us would have died. Such moments bring to mind just how fragile and precious life is. But most of us, most of the time, manage to feel ourselves distant from our mortality.
Actually, that’s simply not true for many people in the world. Many people confront concretely and every day the stark evidence of mortality: Will tomorrow be the day when a young child finally succumbs to starvation? Will this afternoon be the time that a missile or drone falls on this apartment building rather than the one down the street? Will one die next week from an easily cured disease simply because one lacks access to medical care?
Many of us, much of the time, are rather removed from those challenges. I’m thinking now about the challenge of mortality itself: how does one live in the face of the realization that life is short, even for those who manage to avoid living the nasty and brutish life suffered by many others?
I would begin by emphasizing the importance of empathy.
Click to read a brief tangent about Elon Musk and Donald Trump on empathy.
I know that Elon Musk and others say that empathy is civilizationally suicidal, and that view seems to inform the actions of the administration that Musk is currently serving. As the linked article goes on to point out, “Whether Trump succeeds or fails in his quest to remake US society is very much a question of how much of the pain of others Americans are willing to abide in the pursuit of making America great again.” It seems to me that we don’t yet know the answer to that question. And that part of coming to that answer turns in part on just what “great” means.
David Hume and other philosophers have argued that empathy is at the root of moral judgment, but I’m not focused on moral judgment here; instead, I’m suggesting that empathy opens the door to a deeper understanding of and stance in response to our mortality. Even those of us who are fortunate enough not to see immediate and direct challenges to our mortality can get a sense of it by paying attention to the lives of others. Seeing and empathizing with others’ suffering, suffering that signals mortality, pushes us to confront our own. Yes, as the father said, such a confrontation is a heavy lift for a fourteen-year-old. It’s a heavy lift for anyone, especially for those of us privileged enough to avoid thinking of our mortality. But even if we try to ignore it, suffering is a part of life.
“We cannot change human suffering because it is the condition of our existing at all. But we can make it articulate. We can make loss, death, and therefore life, present, discernible, real, and in that way turn something unbearable into something human. That is only possible with others, though; hence the touches, the hands, the quizzical looks, the being together, and the being separate” (Lindsey Stonebridge, We are Free to Change the World, p. 202).
We live our lives more authentically — more humanely — if we acknowledge our mortality and face it directly. And I think we face it most fruitfully if we face it in community.