Picking Flowers and the Denial of Death

“Le Cheval de Troie” by Gérard Vulliamy

If we stopped denying the inevitability of our own death, would we allow ourselves to live a life we truly desire?

A few years ago, I ordered a book that had innocently caught my attention on Pinterest: Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death. To say that it has shaped my life in ways I never fathomed would be a gross understatement.

Gradually, Becker’s words took hold of me, invading my mind from within. Never before had I felt such relief amid misery—gaining the ability to fit mismatched puzzle pieces of my surroundings with my life. I felt seen by this man whom I would never know. I cried, miserably curling up during long nights on my couch, unable to put the book down, craving someone to talk to about the insights I was gaining. I felt numb, as if my inner self had died. Turning the last page brought together all the feelings that had passed through me while reading the book, forming a sense of attainment.

As the book promises, it starts with death: one that is unforeseen, as it is the death of the author himself. Shortly after submitting the manuscript, his theory was, whether by chance or a higher power, to be tested on himself.

Upon hearing the news of the author’s passing, the publisher hurried to his bedside for their first conversation. The question not only he was asking himself, but most likely everyone who hoped to find a pinch of salvation in the book, was whether Becker felt prepared to die. Would he have regrets? Would he be calm? More specifically, did his way of thinking not only enable him to live an authentic life but also take away his fear of impending death? And would his book grant the same grace to us?

One of Becker’s key arguments is the role religion plays in our relationship to death, with its promise of the afterlife. Many world religions view our time on earth as God’s punishment, reducing it to our banishment from paradise. Only if we adhere closely to the religion’s rules will we be rewarded with access to the afterlife.

The Denial of Death was published in 1973, a time when the church’s influence was no longer omnipresent, yet its teachings had ingrained itself into the collective subconscious and has become a natural part of our morals, norms, and culture.

In the 19th century, during a time of heightened dichotomy between traditional religious views and modern scientific perspectives, Karl Marx remarked that “criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.”

Becker deduced a similar ideology from his sociological observations. As people slowly started questioning religious teachings, the science-rooted phenomenon opened people’s eyes to the mythical aspects of religion. These imaginary flowers, which had once beautified many harmful teachings, no longer disguised the reality of human suffering through religion. Like Marx, Becker believed in freeing oneself from limiting beliefs and immersing oneself in life—to pluck the living flowers.

If we spend our lives seeking our purpose in death or are too afraid of dying that it renders us numb and makes us submit our free will to pre-existing societal and religious norms of who we should be and what we should do, then all we will have achieved by the end of our time is wasting our precious life.

While religion can provide us with hope and comfort—the knowledge of not being alone—it has simultaneously caused people to confine their minds in fear, leading them to live lives mirroring ideals from religious writings.

Since we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a higher power, in order to live a fulfilled life of our own desire, I prefer to live under the assumption of there not being an afterlife. For the simple reason that while heaven or reincarnation cannot be proven, we do have our life on earth, and we should not waste this gift.

Fearing and, consequently, denying death might be one of the main reasons people do not dare to make choices for themselves. Operating under the judgmental eyes of society, it appears easier to conform and choose a widely accepted path than to dare to be true to oneself and risk being perceived as a societal outcast.

But if we look inward and ask ourselves how we would want to live the one life we have been granted for certain, what would we actually want to do with it?

Would our priorities change? Would our dreams? Perhaps we would no longer see the point in pleasing others or in slaving away in a nine-to-five job in a profession we never felt passionate about in the first place. Would accepting our mortality elevate us to the point of no longer wanting to fit in and instead allow us to live happily in unconventionality? I believe so.

If we deny ourselves the kaleidoscopic whole of our identity, we will not allow ourselves to be the person we truly want to be.

This, at least, was the mindset Becker imparted on his deathbed, a veil of calmness originating in his heart and draping over the room for his publisher to feel.