What Can We Do Before Death? Do We Have Time? Can Someone Come Save Us?

Near Being, Far Being

A year is long if you do nothing, but if you truly have something to do, a year seems rather short. Or perhaps you have realized something.

I have already forgotten what the self who asked before the college entrance examination, “What does after the exam feel like? Does it really exist?” truly felt at the time. More than two years have passed without my noticing.

Two years go quickly when I have little awareness of them.

When I think about junior and senior year, especially the turmoil that senior year may bring, part of me feels that the one or two years remaining are not very long at all. At the same time, the old unknown attacks me again: what does work actually feel like?

This is probably it: a person always feels that the difficulty they face in their present stage—within the next year or two, near or far; distant things cannot be felt immediately, while near things cause anxiety—is incomparable, impossible to get through, and that there is nothing else beyond it.

Of course, an approaching exam in a subject you are not confident about can bring a similar feeling, and the imminent end of winter or summer break works the same way.

But is this feeling truly impossible to break through? Must we remain forever confined to this one or two years, feeling that the future is hopeless because we cannot see any road beyond it?

Here I need to step outside and talk about my own experience.

A Sudden Urgent Experience of Death, and an Unavoidable Reflection on Death

I realized that under ordinary circumstances, ordinary people cannot think this deeply about death.

A sudden sense that one will die—that death is not distant—can pull a person beyond this boundary.

In Existentialist Reading Notes, I discussed the theory behind this “urgent experience”: when a deadline is close enough, a person shifts from the “forgetful mode of being” to the “mindful mode of being.”

For example, one or two weeks ago I found something black, like a mole, on my chest, but I knew it had definitely not been there before. After watching it for a while, I noticed that it seemed to be growing.

Melanoma. That word came to mind immediately, and malignant skin tumors are among the worst for spreading. For several days, despite having no medical evidence, I suddenly thought that I might have only a few months to live rather than until graduation. When a word more explosive than graduation—death—stood in front of me, the weight of graduation suddenly blurred. I was thinking about what I could still do if I had only a few months to live; this was not an outline for writing, but complete, unavoidable identification with the thought.

I did not find an answer, but in only a few days I almost changed my old sleep habits. I gradually began waking at 7<20>, perhaps intending to get up even earlier; one morning I rose around seven. I stopped reading novels in bed before sleep. I used to follow my roommate to 8 a.m. classes—getting up after 7<50> and starting class at 8<20>, with breakfast more often absent than present.

That Tuesday I reached the laboratory one step before my automatic-control teacher. She came in behind me, saw me, and said, “Here so early? (￣▽￣)” “Couldn’t sleep. -_-” “Not being able to sleep in is good. If you can’t sleep, get up and study. <(￣︶￣)↗” Perhaps it was that one sentence; over the following days I also arrived early more or less consistently.

But most importantly, I suddenly realized that I had no later time left to me. I tried to do today or tomorrow what I had originally planned to do. I wrote code rather than planning what code to write; I read novels and manga rather than forgetting them again and again.

Before, I always placed things on my mental schedule, then some time later casually sighed that I was absolutely the sort of person who never acted according to a plan. Now I also began “eating tomatoes”—using the Pomodoro timer. I have to say that it made me realize when I ought to rest.

As for that black speck, when I asked about it, someone said it looked like a pimple, a blackhead. While I watched it, it naturally fell away; with it went the heart I had kept suspended for days.

Perhaps I Realized That There Is Nothing Except the Present

Yet thinking about death ahead of time made me realize that graduation is not the only boundary. To put it bluntly, perhaps I will not live until graduation at all; and if I do live beyond graduation, then there seem to be more things I can do than there are now. I realized that my greatest anxiety is this: before graduation, I may still be unable to make anything. I may still be unable to make anything that lets me lie flat.

But then I thought that perhaps I do not need to force myself to make it now. The present may simply be a two-year vacation with comparatively much free time. If I can make it, that is fortunate; if I cannot, I can come back to it later.

I used to learn and make things under the grand premise of wanting to lie flat, but it seems that in the process I lay flat first =-=.

Small Happinesses Are Fine Too

With only three months left to live, Kusunoki holds the 300,000 yen he got by selling thirty years of his lifespan, drinks beer, and says that he will use his remaining time to create a splendor he could not have had in the previous thirty years. It sounds like something a gambler would say. But Miyagi sees things clearly. Rather than realizing that one had made mistakes before and believing one can now turn things around, it is better to take the present and slowly accumulate “small happinesses.” Perhaps this is why I write a blog too.

Because we are born with nothing, we can possess everything. — No Game No Life

Death is forever my best teacher.