Death for Beginners

I don’t read a lot of nonfiction, but there was a book that kept popping up on “best of” lists, and when it came in at the library, I decided to check out the short audiobook. It’s called A Beginner’s Guide to Dying by Simon Boas, and I liked that it started by pointing out that every single person on earth is a beginner in their own death. We never get to become an expert on our own dying because we only do it once.

He says, “I am obviously as much of a novice as you are at this dying business and may well be talking bollocks.”

But to that end, these are the profound takeaways I captured. And while he points out that they are nothing new, they appear in every book about dying. We know that our relationships matter more than our jobs, that the things we worry about rarely come true (and if they do, we deal with them), that we should take more time to enjoy life, but even though we know all of these things, we don’t behave as if we know them.

And for what it is worth, he mentions midway through the book that they went through “10 fruitless years of IVF,” and I think that experience plays into this advice, too.

“All of our tombs will be unvisited in a few short spins of the rock around the star, but the smile you gave the check out lady might still be rippling forward.”

It’s profound to think about: With the exception of the genealogy fans in our families, most people will be forgotten to have ever existed in a few short generations. But the tiny ways we impact other people while we’re here may still be rolling forward, impacting the world in the future. He’s not talking about the major discoveries or inventions. He’s just talking about the small kindnesses or moments of connection we extend to other people.

“We fret about what other people think of us, even though actually other people devote much less time doing so than we imagine. A huge mistake we all make — I think it must be hardwired into us — is to compare ourselves only upwards. Social media probably makes this worse.”

It’s so true — we always compare ourselves up (“I’m not doing as well as she is”) vs. down (“I am so grateful that I have this job”). It would make more sense when you feel yourself comparing yourself in one direction to also look behind and realize where you’re not and happy that you’re not.

“I don’t advise consuming too much news as it’s too skewed toward the awful, and can leave one just hopeless and wrongly depressed about the state of the world.”

Such a good reminder to close down the news app. It doesn’t make you ill-informed. The important news has a way of getting to us even when we try to shut it out. But understanding that we’re being manipulated by the media and what is reported and how. So dip into coverage, get what you need, and then go and process it yourself (or do something about it).

“Thoughts and emotions arrive, and they fall away. The past exists only in our memory, and the future, only in our imagination. By recognizing that, we can focus on the present, let go of worry, and even pain, though I’m not quite there yet, and understand that so much of our suffering is actually made by ourselves, both through our expectations and our inability to see how beautiful we all are at our core.”

Very true.

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”

He quotes Queen Elizabeth’s words, but I wanted to set them here, too. Big love = big grief. There’s no way around the cost.

“We humans are programmed to focus on the negative. To remember losses more than gains and hardships more than softships. That kept our ancestors alert and alive on the savanna. However, many developed countries today seem to be experiencing an epidemic of depression, pessimism, and anger. This simply isn’t justified by the conditions we live in.”

He admits that there are problems in the world, big issues that need addressing. But the book is also scattered with reminders that the negative lens doesn’t always serve us. And the solution is to stop the comparisons, stop the things you know are making you unhappy, and connect with the people you love.