Fear of Finality

The morning after Halloween, I rode my Giant road bike along the Riverfront Trail as dawn broke.

The faint sun was veiled behind a dense sheet of clouds. About thirty minutes into the ride, a fog drifted in and choked out the environment. I could see nothing but gray. The animals, the trees, and the river seemed to no longer exist.

I found my mind drifting like the fog around me. I thought about Halloween and what scares people.

I think at the core of what scares people is the fear of finiteness, which is entwined with the fear of death. That one’s existence and consciousness can be wiped out in a moment is what keeps people up at night. It is what has helped conjure various religions and the stranger superstitions such as astrology and tarot cards. Their purpose is to deny this fear from being. We want to believe there is purpose for our existence and that we will continue for eternity. What is it like to not be?

I see this fear played out in every facet of the world.

Corporations and governments, like all organisms, want dominance, but empires come and go.

Modern young adults like to speak of building legacies. They expect their life volumes will be in print forever, but said volumes are quickly lost in the library archives. This reminds me of the ending to Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. The city’s greatest gangster, who spent his entire life vying for power and control, is buried in the city. Then, over the course of a hundred years, we see nature steadily ruin his grave until it is barely perceptible to the human eye at all.

Money, like the tide, ebbs and flows.

Things fall apart, and things cease to be. But, this is only scary if it is denied.

It is not “ceasing to be” that scares me a fraction as much as something else: wasting the time in which I am.