Editor’s Note: Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles a reader’s existential worry. He wants to hear about what’s ailing, torturing, or nagging you. Submit your lifelong or in-the-moment problems to dearjames@theatlantic.com.
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Dear James,
Do you ever feel like you know how you’re going to die? I’m 38 years old, have no health conditions, take no medication, and work a low-risk job with manageable stress. The way I see it, I’m Teflon, except for two Achilles’ heels (both heels!):
1. My driving
2. My diet
I’m not an insane driver. It’s not as if I weave between six lanes of traffic to gain one car length. But I do love to drive fast, and I also hate to waste time. It’s a potent combination. I’ve had enough close calls that I can’t deny the significantly nonzero chance that one day all the high-speed, moving variables align to end me.
If the car doesn’t get me, it’ll be my high-fat, high-calorie diet. Despite my life of fast-food abundance, I am not obese, because I am extremely tall and get regular exercise. My large frame hides a lot of excesses. Though external warning signs are absent, everything I know about nutrition makes me feel like I’m headed for a stealth cardiac event or terrible, late-detected cancer.
Don’t get me wrong: I love living! But I think that’s why I find myself handicapping the cause of my own death. Is this normal, or at least not unprecedented?
Dear Reader,
First: Slow down, dude. I’m not being metaphorical. Go slower in your car! In my mind, I see you zooming around out there, folded over the wheel in your tallness, blazing with your fast-food calories, calculating your odds, making a bit of a menace of yourself. I like being speedy too, but think about who else is on the road with you: the panicking, the wild with anger, the hesitant, the half-asleep, the ones who need their eyes tested. Also: the nice people just driving along on their way to Chuck E. Cheese. Do not conscript them into your game of high-speed moving variables.
Now to your question: Is it normal to envision or predict the cause of one’s own death? I think it most certainly is. The other night I attended a performance by the Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan, a very Beckettian figure in his baggy black suit and tipped-back hat, speaking lyrically about madness and death, twitching around in the spotlight. Tiernan told us that he was all for the death penalty, because it gives the condemned man a how and a when and a why: You’re going to die at 3 p.m. on Thursday, by such-and-such a method, because you killed someone with an ax. (Rather than conking out randomly in a room at the DoubleTree, was his point.) Me, I imagine rather fondly that I’ll get hit by a bus: I picture myself looping through the air post-impact, in slow motion, full of regrets and reconsiderations, perhaps even having a last-minute breakthrough. But the Lord comes like a thief in the night, doesn’t he? So I’m pretty sure that, when the ultimate moment arrives, that’s not how it’ll be. You, too, might get a surprise. In the meantime: I’m glad you love living. Eat fewer McNuggets, and take your foot off the gas.
Droning with mortality,
James
Dear James,
Because I’m an old geezer (I’ll be 80 next June), I often reflect on the wreckage I may have left behind in my long life. In the past couple of years, someone I hurt emotionally has stopped talking to me entirely, and he’s made it clear that I shouldn’t try to get in touch with him, either.
Over the course of about 30 years, I have sincerely apologized to him a couple of times for the damage I did. But now, in my old age, it occurs to me that an apology—no matter how sincere—does not have the emotional and moral weight that asking for forgiveness does. It’s not really getting to the bottom of what happened between us. What do you think?
Dear Reader,
I don’t know how anybody expects to get to the end of their life, especially a long life, without a look over their shoulder at the mile-wide seam of smoldering, Mad Max ruination they’ve left behind them: craters, twisted frames, flattened people. Equally, I’m sure your eight decades have been strewn with uncounted good deeds and good vibes. Why not reckon them up?
I once got dumped by a friend—extremely painful!—and I sought advice from someone with more experience than me. “Ah,” he said, “when it’s over, it’s so over.” And so it has proved. Sounds to me like your friend can’t, won’t, or is disinclined to forgive you. So forgive yourself. Let yourself off the hook. Leave him to his life, and get back to living yours. And when the ruminations arise, those creeping wreckage-thoughts, simply give them a nod and then turn your mind elsewhere. Make yourself a nice cup of coffee and sit and watch the weeds grow.
In rustic peace,
James
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