When Kobe Bryant died, as with any iconic persons death, people said the tragedy should be a reminder of lifes fragility. That it should be a memento mori, a sign we could be gone at any second. A warning to push us to cherish the important things in life our family, friends, passions, and beauty of the world and not to waste energy on inconsequential things. The constant knowledge of how sudden life can end is a tool to energize us into living a better and more clear life.

This reminder is effective because it comes in flashes, often when public icons die. Its only in those flashes we can truly wrangle with death. We periodically look up at the sword of Damocles to remind us that its there, but we cant live while staring and thinking of it falling. Its not that we forget our mortality, but that keeping it present in our minds is an impossible task while living.

In the movie Troy, Brad Pitts Achilles says, The gods envy us. They envy us because were mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because were doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

The idea that the doomed state of life makes the beauty of it more profound is a beautiful statement, but if the gods envy us for our mortality, I think we also envy them for their immortality. If not for ourselves, then at least for the ones we love.

In The Iliad, it wasnt Achilles who knew the burden of his own mortality, but his mother Thetis, a goddess of the sea. She was immortal and he wasnt. She knew from a prophecy that when he chose to go to war, his life would be brief. She spends her time trying to please and soothe her son, making each moment as sweet as possible before his doom, but also trying, as she did when she first dipped him in the river Styx, to save him.

When he begged her to plead with Zeus on his behalf to cause misery to the Trojans after Agamemnon dishonored him, she accepted his request after saying:

My child, why did I rear you, cursed in my child-bearing? Would that it had been your lot to remain by your ships without tears and without grief, since your span of life is brief and endures no long time; but now you are doomed to a speedy death and are laden with sorrow above all men; therefore to an evil fate I bore you in our halls.

Thetis is anguished by Achilles mortality more than Achilles could ever be. Their moments together are sweet because she loves him, but she is also bitter from the knowledge that there wont be many more.

Of course Achilles had to know he would eventually die. He was human and a warrior, he had killed people. He had seen and caused death. But he is most human in that he is only aware of death in the abstract.

Unless it has a set time and place, death is impossible to grasp. It is both near and far. It could come at anytime, and we know that, but the potential suddenness and finality of it is against life, which is full of second chances and change. Random, sudden death is so antithetical to the way humans see their lives, with death as the closing of the book, that the thought I could die in the next minute is repulsive.

The potential of sudden death can be considered only for a brief moment, before being pushed away. Otherwise, the terror of the thought would be paralyzing. Achilles could go out and fight, pout and rejoice, love and live, cherish and waste moments, because he saw himself alive in that immediate moment and the next. He eventually does die, but when Odysseus praises him in the underworld, Achilles doesnt opine on the beauty of his doomed time in the world. He rebukes his friend:

Glorious Odysseus: dont try to reconcile me to my dying. Id rather serve as another mans labourer, as a poor peasant without land, and be alive on Earth, than be lord of all the lifeless dead.

We wake up everyday and make plans for the future, and not just for what is immediate and urgent plans that are often inconsequential, as if our lives are not doomed. We continuously project ourselves into the future, as Achilles must have. Helene Cixious writes in Stigmata that we feign immortality, and we have to:

Outside, I know, but fundamentally I dont believe, everything we think we dont think, thats because were alive, we inhabit the country of the living; that which is beyond, outsidewe dont have the heart to believe. We cant believe in death in advance, it remains inadmissible. Our immortality is: not-believing-in-death.

This disbelief makes itself apparent when someone who we care about does suddenly die. We think there must be a mistake, that its a hoax. Its all a bad dream, and when we wake up, things will return to what they should be. A person we love couldnt possibly be gone, it must be another. We keep hoping that by denying the event, we can make it unreal. It takes a long time for reality to settle in.

When I first read the news of Bryants death, I looked at the headlines reading Kobe Bryant has died in a helicopter crash and thought that it was an absurd statement. The more I read it, the more nonsensical it seemed. It was a thing that was possible, but didnt feel tangible.

When we accept the truth, we go on to celebrate everything our loved one did in their short time. And there is an intensity to their time that get colored in postmortem because of how short it was, but I think thats how we have to reconcile with death, as Odysseus tried to do. Beauty is not a quality that potential disaster adds to life; its what were left with when the physical presence of the person who we miss is gone. If Bryant had lived to be 100 and continued to try to do well, his life would have been even more beautiful. If he had been immortal, even more so. At least for us. The way it would have been for Thetis with her son.

Bryants stature added another layer of disbelief to his death. Bryant is someone who is seen as an icon to millions. Though we can never be immortal, we do create gods all the time. We turn people like Bryant into superheroes, into beings who are transcendent of humanity. Great athletes like him are rarely ever just athletes, they become symbols, ideas, myths. Theyre as immortal as we could possibly be. For these people, a sudden death seems beneath them. Bryant, who was larger than life, dying from a negligible accident. It is incomprehensible. If he, of all people, is vulnerable to that possibility, then the rest of us are even more so.

Yet Bryants death doesnt really bring the concept of sudden death any closer. It is still only possibly, but not entirely, real. Bryant died in a helicopter crash. Not many of us will ever find ourselves in that situation. We may walk outside, get in cars, cross the street during traffic, and toy with our mortality in more familiar ways than getting into a helicopter, but while we know the potential of sudden death, its hardly ever in the forefront of our minds.

Willful ignorance of fatal danger is the only way we can go through each day and imagine ourselves in the next one. And when we do lose people we care about suddenly, the celebration of their lives is followed immediately by the greater grief of their extinguished presence. Celebration is only a small comfort. What we are often left with is a deep helplessness and sadness.

What then? What can save us from this omnipresent and terrifying possibility of death? Im not sure there is an answer, but I like the idea of feigning immortality. Not living with the constant knowledge that any moment could be our last, but that death, until it comes, doesnt matter at all it has nothing to do with life.

I think of how Bryant trained and played, how he wasnt afraid of the big moments or failure. And how that attitude came from a defiance of finality rather than an acceptance of it.

My colleague, Tom Ziller, wrote that Bryant played as if there was no tomorrow, but I think he has it backwards. Bryant behaved as if there were infinite tomorrows. While he played basketball, he did so obsessively, but then he moved on to other pursuits, and imagined himself doing even more in the future. When asked why he wasnt afraid of taking the last shot, he said: Theres an infinite groove. Whether you make the shot or miss it is inconsequential.

Its not the potential of an end that creates beauty or urgency, its the possibility of a future. Life is all about tomorrows, about growth, continuance, and change, about dreams. Death is repulsive because it is not life. It can never get closer than its abstract form, and it shouldnt. It is true we are powerless before it, but until the event of death, it is also powerless before us.

The rest is here:
Kobe Bryant lived without fear of death - SB Nation