A Matter of Life and Death

Pushkin.

The destination is on your right. The Somerville Public Library in East Branch arrived.

I'm headed to my local library, but not to check out a book. I'm on a quest, a quest that has obsessed philosophers, poets, and mystics for ages. I'm on a quest to confront death.

Do you know the death cafe?

I'm about to attend what's known as a death cafe. Deaf cafes are small community get togethers in which total strangers meet to talk candidly about their inevitable demise, usually over tea and cake. There are ten people at this particular death cafe, all first time attendees, just like me. We discussed how we'd like to spend our final seconds alive, what we wanted done with our bodies after we passed, and the fears we have about dying. It was intense. There were some laughs, but also tears.

Were you scared before you came? I was scared?

I was like, what was SCAREDY?

I was more curious than scared, I was. I was actually very excited. I was thinking about this last night. I'm like, I'm humped for the death cafe. Yeah, I think I was. I just I like doing weird experiences. This is a weird thing I signed up for, and it was nice. I got a lot of good ideas on where I'd like to view when I die. I never thought about that same. Yeah, it was nice to get me able to talk about death in a very open environment. There's cake, and there was cake.

That was a good cake.

I left the death Cafe with the huge slights of red velvet cake and a lot to think about. You see, I really really hate talking about planning for, or even contemplating my own death, so I may as well come clean. I doctor Lorie Santo's, am a fanatophobe. What is theanatophobia? You ask, well? Fanatophobia, which I think I'm saying right, is the fear of death. I find the fact that I'm going to die not just a downer but deeply terrifying. The thought that I and all the people I love

Aka?

When do you think you're gonna die? Ah, And surveys show I'm not the only ones spooked by dying. On average, people report death as their number one terror, which beats out even public speaking. Our collective denial of death means that most of us don't do what we need to do to get ready for it. Only about half of people in the US today have life insurance and only a quarter have a living will. Now you might be thinking, well, death sucks. Is it so bad that we're a little

Hello, and it's so good to meet you, Laurie. Hello.

Psychologist Jodi Wellman does not share my all consuming fear of death? Is it the natophobia? Is that how you say it?

Fanataphobia? I see thanataphobia, but thanatophobia. I have really terrible thanatophobia. I'm like, really spooked about death. It's one of the reasons I was so excited.

To get your book. Jody's book is called You Only Die Once, How to make it to the end with no regrets. You Only Die Once is a celebration of all things thanatophilia, embracing the fact that your time is limited. I enjoyed the book a lot, but reading it did make me feel a little queasy.

Am I striving to make us barf in our mouths while we think about this? No, if I know that it's going to cause just enough existential like poking of the ribs.

Oh, then I get so excited.

Jody's path that thanatophilia began with a tragedy. Her mother died at only fifty eight years old, and Jody was stuck cleaning out her apartment.

For me, it was like this, I don't know, a show and tell in a way of all of her dreams and hopes and plans and intentions that she didn't execute. So I kind of call it like the graveyard of hopes and dreams.

Jody found unfinished drafts of books, business plan that had never been implemented, and long lists of cool stuff that her mother had wanted to do but never got around to doing. It all hit Jody like a ton of bricks.

Oh my gosh, I don't want to get to the end and have all of these manuscripts not sent out, and plans and hopes that I didn't try. You know that felt more fearful to me than anything.

Jody wasn't exactly enjoying her life at the time. She was very much in danger of repeating her mother's pattern.

By this point, I was officially disenchanted at work, but I didn't really know what to do about it. So here I am day going about my work, and I stabled a couple pages together, and my stapler ran out, and so I went.

To the storeroom.

I loaded up the stapler, and this thought occurred to me as I was putting the.

Row of staples into the stapler.

I said, I'd better not be here by the time this row of staples runs out.

So Jody had finally set a time limit for taking action. She was sure she'd be making some big changes, you know soon right. But then one fateful day, the stapler ran out again and Jody was still in her job with no plan B, and.

I felt so dropkicked.

That's when Jody had an epiphany.

Wait a sec.

You can't just expect stuff to happen to you, to be miraculously like helicoptered out of your average job into something that's going to inspire you.

You need to do something about it.

And do something Jody did. She quit her boring job and entered a master's program in positive psychology. During her studies, she became fascinated with one topic, in particular, the concept of death awareness, the act of intentionally thinking about your mortality. It's a practice that the ancient's called Memento maury.

It's the Latin phrase that means remember that we must die.

Memento mori has roots in religion and philosophy, but it was also expressed through art and fashion, and Jody has lovingly adopted these traditions. She wears black jewelry and draws cartoons of the grim Reaper. Jody's favorite possession is a tarnished gold coin engraved with the text of that Latin model. Whenever Jody stumbles across the coin in her purse, she ritualistically says, I AM going to die soon.

It's just that little subtle reminder that says, oh, yeah, right, we're temporary.

It may sound morbid, but the science suggests that Jody might be onto something. Researchers have studied what happens when people come dangerously close to the end, Folks with fatal cancers who suddenly got better, or survivors of terrible car accidents.

It's like they put new glasses on and it can see things with clarity that we don't because we're just sweating the small stuff all frickin' day long. Whereas they have this ability to say that little email that I haven't answered yet.

In the Kurian scheme of things, it's lucky to be alive. That doesn't matter. This does, And one.

Thing that really matters to people who've nearly died are their friends and family. People who face death make time for those that matter and get more discerning about those that don't.

You enliven me, I'm going to spend more time with you. You de energize me. I'm going to opt to spend less or no time with you. So there's that refinement of the way your time is spent.

Brushes with mortality also cause us to help others more often, a practice that lots of research shows is a great way to improve your well being. It's twenty twenty one and Russell Lowe is lying in a California hospital bed. Russell was a physician, but this time he's the one in need of virgic care. Russell contracted an infection, a

We have nothing to lose, and life's too short to not do the thing that we might want to do.

All this was sounding great in theory, but I mean, just speaking.

For myself, death is like an absolute doubt or like it super freaks me out, Like I hate hate thinking about it.

How is it literally talking about it right now?

As together?

It's no, Seriously, it kind of freaks me out.

Like reading your book.

The distinct sensation I experienced was that I'm about to vomit. Yeah, it doesn't feel awesome. I'm really really avoiding of it. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, can I be fixed? Can I be fixed? I think you're fixable.

JODI's fix begins with what she calls the life calculator exercise. The goal is to calculate just how many mondays you have left. You start with the average US life expectancy, just over eighty years for women and just under eighty for men. You then subtract your current age, take that number and multiply it by fifty two. And that's about the number of mondays you've got left. So if I did the math right, I think it is eighteen forty nine.

Does that sound right? Yeah, eighteen forty nine. Please tell me how nauseous did you feel?

Right? Hollar?

Very nauseous?

Like, eighteen forty nine is a big number, but it's a pretty fineite.

What can I actually fit into one thousand, eight hundred and forty nine weeks? I mean, I love movies and try to watch at least one new one a week. Have I really got only one thousand, eight hundred and forty nine movies left before I die? I mean, there's probably not even enough time to get through that first scrolling page on Netflix. How many more times am I going to watch favorites like Casablanca or The Big Lebowski or Star Wars, and god, how many more novels do

So yes, and yes, I feel really revolted by this, and I'm going to book a vacation. The dose is just right enough to take my breath away, but not enough to paralyze me.

It's just enough to say, what am I doing? What's this all about? Am I making the best use of my time?

And we have to reflectively keep coming back to that reminder because we will get swept up in the current of life.

I get Jody's point here. I don't want to get swept up in the current of life. But sorry, death still terrifies me. I just hate letting it creep into my thoughts. What I need is someone who can help me think of death as a bit more.

I don't know.

Fun like if you're going on a trip someplace, most of us are like excited about it. You know, a vacation that you plan for a year or so, you like to throw to go. You know, we could do the same thing with our dying.

The happiness lab will return in a moment. So lots of people.

Maybe think about death once in a while. I try to avoid thinking about death. How often do you think about death?

Every day? Multiple times a day.

This is Ailia Arthur. Ailua is definitely not scared of death.

Sometimes when I'm doing something ridiculous, like reaching when I'm in the shower for a towel, that's just like a little bit out of my grip, and I wonder what would happen if I slipped and hit my head on the edge of the think But often I'm thinking about death all the time.

We tend to think of stuff associated with death as being creepy. Funeral homes are creepy. Cemeteries are creepy. Morticians are creepy. Aila switched careers to change that. She used to be a lawyer and hated it. I was confused and lost and hopeless. I had no sense of what I wanted out of my own life. I couldn't figure out what the point was. You know, you get up, you go.

To work, you pay your bills, to pay your taxes, eat food. What is the point of all of this?

Ailua finally took a medical leave and headed to Cuba.

And along the way I met a fellow traveler named Jessica, a young German woman who had utin cancer and was traveling to see the top six places in the world she wanted to see before she died. It was kind of like her bucket list trip. I mean, there was like a little crack in the door, and I kicked it all the way open. I asked so many very very deep and personal questions, and she lit up in

But the direction Ailua took might surprise you. She didn't just lays around on Caribbean beaches all day. She decided to spend her days with people facing their final days. You see, Alua became a death doula.

A death doula somebody who does all of the non medical care and support of the dying person through the entire process. And how we define dying person really depends, because anybody who's come into recognition or their mortality at some point must also reckon with the fact that they are currently dying. But overall, we're supporting folks when they have some awareness that death is approaching and want to plan and prepare.

For Aileo describes her journey in a new book entitled Briefly Perfectly Human, making an authentic life by getting real about the end. Much of the impetus for taking on this new role came from watching her brother in law face terminal cancer.

I remember very distinctly trying to keep track of all the questions that I had. You know, it was my sister's husband, and so she'd be with him in the hospital, and I'd be on the computer, click clock clock and trying to get some information, trying to answer these questions, and it was so tough. It was really tough to

Death doula's are a lot like birth doula's, those professionals trained to support people having a baby.

It just had a really good conversation with a friend of mine who was pregnant, and she was talking all about her birth plan, and she was talking about going to the birth thing center and what she's eating and what she likes to experience. Thinking through the plan helped her quell her anxiety about what it is that's going

And pregnancy isn't the only time we seek out outside support. We're all perfectly happy to have professionals guide us through other big life events. I mean, we have therapists who help us through tough times, math tutors to guide us through calculus, and personal trainers to get us into shape.

And so to me, death dullah's are a very very natural and easy addition to that list of people that can support At the time when I think we probably need them the most.

Ailua now has hundreds of clients, and while I wasn't ready to have her plan out my own death just yet, I did want to learn about the wisdom she'd gained from being so very close to death so very often. I mean, she's heard so many people reflect on their hopes and fears and regrets about the end. How has that changed her own views on life.

I'm not a nihilist any means, but I wonder if we put so much focus on making meaning in order to contextualize life and make it make some type of sense where there is no sense to be made. And so rather than continuing to try to force things into some box to make it make sense, maybe we can just let go and experience it for what it is,

As we continued chatting, I was struck by alu As constant gratitude. She just seems so appreciative of the things that I take for granted all the time.

There is so much magic in the fact that we live, you know, the fact that we are human just to be alive, to be present for whatever our bodies capabilities are. That in and of itself is a miracle, which makes doing the dishes also feel like a miracle. To feel water on my hands, to feel heat, to feel soap, all of that grounding in my mortality means that at some point I won't have access to all these senses anymore, you know, And so how cool is it that I

I mean, when you say it like that, facing your death doesn't sound so horrible things that are happening in the present moment, but.

Right now it still feels a little terrifying.

I'm not gonna lie.

I mean, are you still skipped by it or is it like, like, what are the emotions that it brings up for you?

Curiosity? Mostly, I'm really really curious because all of the questions around it remain a mystery. You know, I don't know when it'll be Maybe it is just a really fantastical ride through the universe and then there's no more consciousness or maybe the afterlife, if there is one, is like this really glorious place of existence. I have no idea, and so I'm curious about it.

I was gonna say, so you experienced that as curiosity, but I experience that as terror. So my usual move when I don't know something is to like check right. So I'm going to a restaurant and I'm thinking, oh, I don't know if they have a good cocktail menu. I pull out my phone and I like, check the cocktail menu. You know. I'm going to a new doctor, and I don't know how good he is, right Like, I look up and try to check on these things.

You stin't know, you can't you don't.

Know, And so talk about how you can kind of sit and allow that uncertainty.

Rather than imagine the worst possible scenario, I imagine one that brings me some comfort. I imagine something that makes me feel good about it. Because I don't know, and we can't know, and what we tend to do is flood the uncertainty with dread and fear and the opposite could also be true. Like if you're going on a trip someplace, most of us are like excited about it. You know, a vacation that you planned for a year or so, you're like thrill to go. You've never been

This remarkable capacity to adapt is what the psychologist Dan Gilbert has christened our psychological immune system. Just as we have a physical immune system to protect our bodies from physical threats, so too, do we have a psychological immune system designed to protect our mental health from psychological threats. When uncertain moments come up, like a divorce, or a scary diagnosis, or a struggle at work, our psychological immune system unconsciously takes over to help us adapt and thrive

We know how to do it already, and so we could attach the same perspective that we use on living for our dying that when the time comes, I will adapt.

Chatting with Aluo was reminding me that I'm stronger than I think even when it comes to facing death. So when we get back from the break, I'll get even more hardcore and my quest to embrace mortality. I'll go on a death safari right in my own neighborhood, and I'll attempt to stare my impermanence straight in the face.

Okay, so heading.

Over to the mirror. Yeah, uh, that's my aging forty something body.

The Happiness Lab will be right back. Like I don't like anything that's finite, Like I don't like when a meal ends, I don't like when a vacation ends. I don't like what a really good television series ends. And so the idea that I my end is like really uncomfortable for me.

It's difficult to think of myself as finite.

Death do la Ailua Arthur is very gently helping me work through my fanta hiphobia.

My drive for life is big, and that makes it hard to also release and to let it go when I love it so much. But I think about this all the time because when we say we love something, I can't love it and also not love the end of it. My end is a part of my life. If I'm going to love my life, I've got to love it all.

This idea of loving it all is something we've talked about on this podcast before. We tend to pooh pooh experiences. We don't enjoy feelings like sadness, anxiety, and fear, but study after study shows we'd be better off embracing the tough stuff in life rather than pushing it away like death. Painful experiences are just part of what there is to love.

They are part of the human experience whole. Humans feel a whole host of emotions, and none of them are bad or wrong. They're just maybe a little bit more difficult. So at least reframing to think of it as just a part of what it's like to be human that supports me a lot. Like even on my tougher days, when I'm feeling like I'm in the trenches, I often remember that this is just part of what it means, this is just how it goes.

And I think another interesting thing about like recognizing the temporariness of these negative emotions temporary like because you're going to die, is it can actually make you enjoy them more in a weird way. Right after I finished your book, I kind of had this weird stomach thing.

It had nothing to do with your book.

By the way, It's a separate eating incident, but because I had just been thinking so much about my impermanence, I like readed what I would normally think of as a not good sensation very differently, where I thought, Huh, how curious that I'm experiencing something. I'm experiencing something that feels really intense, kind of brought with it a sort of kind of strange gratitude for something that I wouldn't

I've been noticing that more and more.

Yes.

And also a way to hold like the difficult stuff very very gingerly, you know, because often when people are dying, there's a hole of things going on in the body. Hopefully the pain is well controlled, but the body's doing things that we're not familiar with, we can't control it at all, and holding it very very lightly today the optic nerve is not working or today this is what

I told Ailua that I do want all the benefits that come with accepting my mortality. The research suggests it'll make me more compassionate, it'll encourage me to be more mindful, and it'll push me to achieve stuff that I really want to achieve in life. But I explained, I really hate the idea that I'm going to die someday, and that is when Ailua hit me with a truth bomb. Death Is it some distant appointment oft in the future. I'm actually deep in the process of dying right now.

Because if we can get more comfortable with the fact that living and dying is also happening, and which will be happening all the way up until we're actually dead, I think it maybe eases a bit of that fear like one day I'm going to be dying. No, You're dying right now. So noticing the living and dying things that are around our environment.

Aila suggested an exercise to help with this, one that I tried out on my morning walk to my favorite coffee shop. I took my usual path, but this time I tried to notice all the signs of dying that I normally ignore. I saw the gorgeous irises in my neighbor's yard that had wilted and turned brown, that plaque commemorating a fallen soldier from World War Two, a banana appeal rotting on a compost heap. I was shocked to realize there were lots of signs of mortality all around me.

Another exercise that I sometimes encourage people to do, which can be tough for some, I'm just going to go ahead and say it, is to spend a little bit of time in the mirror, looking at yourself, looking at your body. I have a lot of mirrors in my house, and at first I thought I was just painfully vain, but I think that I really enjoy seeing myself and

Okay, heading over to the mirror.

Yeah, that's my aging forty something body, getting some SAgs where there were not SAgs before.

Definitely seeing that my skin is not what it used to be. The mirror exercise was much more uncomfortable than the death walk, but ultimately I was able to experience a sense of awe how the passage of time was changing my appearance.

Yeah, fascination, curiosity. I guess my grays are popping off too. So yeah, got through the mirror exercise without barfing. I'm going to call that another death awareness.

When here's the additional step that I think might be a little resenting is to look at yourself in the eyeballs and repeat to yourself, I'm going to die, Oh God, a couple of times, two or three times, take deep breasts in between. Okay, I see you smile.

If that's not a smile, it's like a fear, like, yeah, okay, here goes, I am going to can't if you look at myself in the eyes when I say this mirror exercise two point zero was way way tougher than just staring at some gray hair. Let's try some psychological distance, Laurie, you are going to die full disclosure. I found it existentially overwhelming at first, but after a few mornings trying it out, Okay, it helps. If I close my eyes, I am going to die. I am going to die. I am going to die.

This exercise required a lot of bravery, but it also hit exactly the kind of death awareness dose that psychologist Jodie Wellman recommended earlier, a practice that does take your breath away, but at the same time helps to inspire a change.

An astonishing life doesn't just happen to us. We have to take action towards it. But sometimes taking that bold step it does take courage.

It's not exactly fun to remember that you're fine. Mortality is a bummer, and thinking about it does feel like a gut punch, But the science shows it's a gut punch with a whole host of psychological benefits, ones that I'm beginning to notice and appreciate. Reflecting on death has helped me realize that there are lots of spots where I'm just phoning in my life. My days are usually busy and productive, but I don't always feel like I'm

Am I a better human? Are you about human? I've tried so hard during.

These we should have planned this out. I began this season by confiding in my friend and producer Ryan Dilley. He's been along for this whole project, so now that we're at the end, I thought i'd see how he thought I did. I think you've been really brave.

You've done a really good job. But some of these really quite tough things. I'm kind of proud of you. Oh you're proud of me. That's really sweet. I've earned a ton from making they shows with you, But what have you come away with?

I mean, lots of things, but I guess the biggest thing is just that I can still change, but there's still a room for improvement.

And it works if I give myself praise as your friend.

That's such a lovely thing to hear im, And I'm so proud that you're able to make that progress.

This particular season may be over, but we're not taking our summer break just yet. We'll have a longer justscussion about what I learned from all the shows you've just heard, and we've got some special Olympics themed shows too. I'll chat with the runner who fell out of love with the track, and we'll learn some happiness lessons from the coaches who coached the coaches who coached Team USA.

This is such a special occasion for me.

I have been a big fan and it resonated so much with me that we were sharing episodes of the Happiness Lab with the coaches we were working with.

That's a lot of coaches, so do come back next time for the Happiness Lab with me. Doctor Laurie Santos