When I was ten years old, I woke myself up in the middle of the night with a terrible bellyache. I went to tell my parents, but stopped short of saying anything beyond "My stomach hurts."
I was having a Mortality Moment, but even at that age, I didn't want to worry them.
A Mortality Moment is when you realize that one day you're going to die. I hadn't developed a firm faith yet, so to me, there was nothing beyond death. That void was conceptually unsettling. So bleak. So finite and Newtonian.
"I'm human, and one day I'll die. As will everyone around me. Then there will be nothing." Those thoughts would be my last ones coming from a place of true innocence. I would then spend the next few decades seeking, "What's beyond the void? "
Although the bellyache eventually subsided, the question has lived on as a persistent knot in my gut. It gets triggered by various happenings in life. Some minor like getting cut off in traffic, some serious like when I had cancer. It birthed other questions like "How can I live meaningfully? What will I be remembered for? What's my destiny and how do I reach it? "
I don't think we talk about death enough as a part of life. It's like there's an unspoken superstition that even talking about it culls the Angel of Death.
But knowing that one day death will come, right next to proving to myself that love is real are key motivators that keep me aligned in life with life.
Have you had any mortality moments? How did that shape you?
I love this. I sometimes will prompt and contemplate the mortality moment to bring more clarity to my life.