Let's face it, mortality sucks, much philosophizing about it is cope

Vanitas still life, by Maria van Oosterwijck (1630–1693)

Nowadays, I often consider the following three scenarios: (1) I am in remission (yay), (2) cancer has spread but is not dramatic; I will need more treatment (note: some treatments due to their destructive nature you can only do once, so I'm not sure what the options are if so), (3) I will die in the very foreseeable future, months or few years. I will get some initial results in a PET scan next month. I'm dreading it.

The thought that I won't be around for very long causes fear and sadness. It just sucks. It’s hard to separate the fear of death from the fear of its effects: not being there for your family (including a young child), not being able to complete projects, not being able to enjoy things anymore or to learn new things, being forgotten.

However, there's a lot of philosophical cope around to help us deal with our mortality. For instance, Epicureans say it's no big deal because we didn't exist for a long time before and we didn't mind that, so why be worried about the time after our lifespan? This doesn't work because of the asymmetry of existence: I won't mind then, but I do mind now, because I exist now! Also, I don't just consider myself, but also the impact on others.

Another example is the range of philosophies that draw meaning from finitude. Death helps us to see what's important. Without death, our lives would have no value. Imagine if you were immortal, like a vampire. You'd be bored out of your wits! Take Bernard Williams's Makropulos Case (1973). He premises his idea that we'd experience a “tedium of immortality” on an opera by Janaček:

Elina Makropulos, alias Emilia Marty, alias Ellian Macgregor, alias a number of other things with the initials ‘EM’, on whom her father, the Court physician to a sixteenth-century Emperor, tried out an elixir of life. At the time of the action she is aged 342. Her unending life has come to a state of boredom, indifference and coldness. Everything is joyless: ‘in the end it is the same’, she says, ‘singing and silence’.

My intuitions are quite different from Williams's. I feel like I could keep myself busy forever. Of course, I'm well aware I do not know what it is like to live forever. One indication that it would not be tedious is my imperfect memory. I can rewatch shows, relook at paintings etc and I could do that forever, since my memory is presumably forever imperfect (an interesting thought experiment in form of a story by

Eric Schwitzgebel

here.) There are lute pieces I've been playing for decades, and I think I would never tire of John Dowland.

For me the tedium of immortality feels like philosophical cope, and I think most of us would be delighted if we could live longer, perhaps indefinitely. Maybe there's a point, like in the end (sorry spoiler) of The Good Place where we could want an exit. And of course, with euthanasia being allowed and regularly practiced in many countries, and with suicide still a major killer, we do sometimes want an exit. But that is an exit from a difficult situation: physical ill health (sometimes caused by old age), psychological distress, and more, not life itself if it could be good.

Spinoza has a psychologically plausible reasoning for why we shouldn't think about death: it makes us sad and fearful, and why would you experience those negative emotions? They don't help you. They stifle your actions. So, maybe our illusion of immortality is helpful.

Obviously, we all know that we're not immortal. We know that death is a necessary thing that will happen to us, unlike other future possibilities, such as a trip planned for next year. The trip can be cancelled. You can stave off death for a while, but never forever, as Heidegger already observed. But we at least have temporarily an illusion that our life could stretch out indefinitely.

To counteract this illusion, humans sometimes remind themselves of mortality: memento mori. Vanitas pictures such as the one above were an enduring popular genre. If you were a well-off 17th-century lady or gentleman, you'd hang this in your drawing room to make sure you didn't forget that all is eventually finite and futile.

Maybe such frequent reminders help us to make peace with death more easily. Everyone I know who is fighting cancer has experienced a severe shock from the sudden realization that they might not get better and that this might be it. If we're always living the illusion of immortality, the shock of possible imminent mortality may be too strong.

I don't know. I only know, personally, that I am what people call middle-aged (mid-40s) and that I expected, until recently, to still have decades to spend time with friends and family, to read and enjoy art and music, to complete various projects. If my pessimism is unwarranted and I'm at least for the time being in the clear, I would predict that a huge weight will fall from my shoulders. We'll see. We all have to come to terms with death. But, it's heavy to live under its very visible shadow.