I Have Never Seen a Dead Person

A couple of months ago I was thinking about getting a new phone. Not because I really needed one. But because my dad had dropped his phone on the sidewalk while he was out walking, and the screen had shattered. The fact that he had been replying to a text I sent him made me think that maybe I should get a new one and he could have mine. It was newer than his anyway. That’s what I told myself. Did I really need a new phone, he asked me. He wanted to get a used phone, but he was also mentioning that some of the older phones didn’t get updates anymore and some apps would not work on it. All of these ’reasons’ for us to consume. I’m old enough to remember when I didn’t have a mobile phone. Even spent most of my teenage years actually having to talk to people or write emails.

I’m the kind of person who needs a trajectory — I want to make life better and to make the lives of others better. But have I ever really helped someone in any way that didn’t require physically being there or being in an in-depth conversation? In those moments, the world moving forward doesn’t really matter. It is in the now we can affect matters. Looking at matters through a screen or mediated through all that content produced by companies profiting from the time I spend consuming — that does not change anything.

I’ve always had trouble getting up in the morning. Even when I haven’t been suffering from depression I have always required a reason for getting up. Sometimes that meaning has been a person, lying beside me. But on a more personal level it has been the promise of the world moving forward. That as each day passes we get older and wiser, happier and wealthier. For many years that was the truth. But it required a constant renewal of circumstances. A new place to live, a new job, a new partner, a new article, a new experience. A new pair of trousers, a new record time for the evening jog, or something as stupid as a new phone.

For years I thought that this was enough, that I was happy. But who was I really doing all this for? The years went past and I couldn’t really see the world getting any better. I finished project after project at work, but no one seemed to get more satisfied or happy. Everything was a just a step on the way towards something better. Solve one challenge so we can move on to a bigger one. But these challenges were never really there. They had been set up by the larger system of the economical and political truth we are living in. Sure, it might be a great idea to build a new school in a certain neighbourhood. But why not try to make the schools that were already there work better?

I partly resent the feeling of being content. Even if that is what I and many others are always striving towards, contentedness is boring. When someone is content it means they are not doing enough, because one could have worked harder, gotten further, created more change in the world. And there is a lot in the world that needs changing. But the bad things aren’t inherent to our world, they OUR problems. The problems we have created and keep creating — for ourselves, for others, for animals and last but not least for nature. We are the problem — there’s no way to get around that.

So with a paradoxical sense of irony I believe I spent all those years thinking that being here in this world was for a reason, and that reason being making things better for all of us. When in fact the best way to solve that would have been to not exist at all. At least not in way that humanity as we know it from the Western world exists. We have not known suffering, we have not had to risk our lives traversing borders to escape chemical warfare, we have not had children who died of starvation, we have not been separated from our families and imprisoned. Most of us have never even seen a dead human being. I have most definitely never seen a dead person.

We live in constant fear of someone taking that privilege away from us. The more wealth people accumulate, the more the fear grows. Until the point where you cannot trust anyone, and you are truly alone. That is what the current society is driving us towards: solitude. Where we can exercise our rights from the safety of our homes, gyms and vacation retreats. In front of a screen that makes us feel ’connected’ to those we feel are important to us. Looking at our phones, trying to stay on top of every update, every notification and every bit of knowledge that builds on our social capital.

Clinging on for dear life

Even now, many of us are still trying to cling onto that way of seeing the world. Looking at the numbers pile ut, tracing trajectories and curves. It’s all about how we will ’recover’ when this is all over. When will the stock market be back at its previous levels? It’s hard not to have that horizon and a trajectory to follow. Anything to keep our daily lives from feeling like a pointless squirrel wheel. Day in and day out we do the same things. Why? Because things will get better. Or at least back to the level of success and wealth the Western world experienced before the current crisis.

I believe a large part of the world’s population don’t care much about that. Why should they? They have been excluded from our success story for decades. To many people, death is an everyday thing, not something to be afraid of. They have seen bad. They have seen dead bodies, perhaps even had to say goodbye to people they loved. It’s out of their hands. But it’s not out of ours. Today, we have a rare opportunity to stop being scared too. Stop caring about all the things that do not matter to us personally, if we look deep inside ourselves. This is not selfish. We have been told it is selfish to think about what we want. But that’s simply because most of the things we want are just products and services someone has given us the impression that we need. Naturally, the assumption that we would need something other than food, water and love is absurd. So we settle for thinking that we ’want’ this or that object. That apartment, that holiday trip.

I think that in the last few years, more and more people in our insulated bubbles have been on their own personal journeys to find out what they actually need to feel good about themselves. What they need to function as human beings, without living on the expense of someone else. Without feeling shame about making money, knowing that money comes out of the pockets of the needy. You can’t have more without someone else having less. That is the basis of capital, whether it is based on labour, social capital or access. But in current era of rentier capitalism the wealthy no longer need that. Money has started making money on its own, somehow creating guilt-free millionaires. The self-made man has been replaced by the auto-made non-gender conforming.

But not until now could we actually see that another world is very possible. Taken out of our trajectories, out of our jobs, out of the supply of goods and services — we can see that life moves on anyway. Of course, many are suffering even worse from the crisis than they were before. But if you don’t die from the virus, you might come out the other end feeling like you have been spared. Sure, life might look a bit different in the years to come, but who’s to say whether that will be worse than the world we have known? In fact, now is precisely the time to think about what we would rather be doing. In this giant breather the world is currently taking, it is very hard not get existential and anxious. But it’s not bad. We evolve through crisis. If it wasn’t hard we wouldn’t want to do it.

It’s the classic case of not being able to see what you have until it’s taken from you. I’ve had experience with that, we all probably have. For me it was a person who was very dear to me. A person I thought I could not be without, but I also secretly knew I did not need them. And after the loss I realised that I had been right. I had been clinging on to something because I was more afraid of what I would be like without it. That and the trauma of past experiences of loneliness. What I know now is that I spent many years, wonderful years with many happy moments, but full of moments that had not been for me. I had been there, I had taken part in them, they had made me feel happy. But it was a joy that didn’t come from within. It was a kind of replacement, for a joy that wasn’t there. An emptiness. And of course it couldn’t be filled. I constantly required more. More affection, more security, more stability, more excitement. All the things we want out of a relationship, a job or any commitment.

I miss you, but I don’t miss me

And naturally I got bored. Afraid of being content. Disgusted by myself. How could I not strive to be more? Know more people. Learn more about myself? To go more places. Not everyone has that freedom. My partner had a father who was very ill, and was only going to get worse. So our trajectories took us in different directions, without either of us even questioning that. I thought I needed something. Just like a couple of months ago I thought I needed a new phone. How stupid was that? And how stupid was I two years ago? What I’ve realised is that I actually didn’t need anything at all. I just wanted something, and it was hard to admit. Hard to finally think about something I wanted for myself.

Once again, there was the irony. Because the thing I wanted for myself was not something that was just for me. I wanted to help people, be there for people and be in people’s lives as more than something you interact with through a screen. I want that because I know I can make a difference. Not through my work or the skills that have, but through simply being there. I know that I am a great listener, I can help people solve their problems, and somehow people just tend to listen to what I have to say. I don’t know why. Maybe it is because of all the bad personal experiences I have had, maybe it is because I’ve started to see things clearer as I’ve gotten older. Maybe I have psychic abilities, who knows?

The point is that when the current crisis started setting in, I finally became sure that I didn’t need any of what I had had before. I had been living for a few months without most of my possessions. I had sold my car, sent my most treasured records off to stay at a friend’s place and sent myself to the other side of the world. Of course, everything was the same there. Me too, I was the same. Imagine that. Even without all my things, without emotional baggage. I am free to just be. Having all the time in the world, I actually feel busier that I have ever been. Listening to music, playing music, writing, swimming, walking, meeting people, sitting in saunas for hours, and mostly just thinking.

How great is it to just think? I have come to realise, at long last, that I think an unusual lot for a human being. I have tried meditating but for me it’s virtually impossible. Even when I am just talking to someone, my brain traces out multiple trajectories of what each thing I could say next could lead to. How it would sound, how I would be perceived in this instant. I try to never say anything unless I really mean it, because there are so many things I could say. I imagine I could rewind my life and still be quite pleased with most things I have said or written. I’ve discussed this with one of my friends who also thinks they think abnormally much about things. We often come up with very elaborate plans for what we are going to do, both of us. But often those plans come to nothing, as I hit a wall at some point or a certain aspect isn’t possible. But I have so many of these, many still come to fruition.

It helps being impulsive. This article was written in one sitting without editing. I just had to get it out, because this is something I have been thinking about for weeks. The last two weeks I have spent in quarantine, itching to get back to getting things done. These days I only do things for myself, but these are often things that also benefit others. I am still in two minds about work. If it’s not for myself then I am not particularly motivated to do it. But writing is something I can do.

The last few months have also been driven by dreams to a certain extent. A couple of months ago I dreamt that I died. I was in a studio, doing a radio show. Naturally everything was going wrong, because I had a scheduled time to broadcast the next week, and I think my brain still hadn’t played through every scenario to make me feel confident enough that it was going to be spotless. In the studio, we could hear a very loud noise. And looking out the window I could see the highrise across the street collapsing in on us. With mere seconds to go, I knew we were going to die. Before waking up, there was a moment when time stopped and I could feel the concrete hitting the walls and the windows. That’s when I knew I was dead, and that’s why I woke up.

All that glitters is gold

I’ve only dreamt that I died once before, and that was when I was child and had a tendency to fall out of aeroplanes (or other great heights) in dreams. I’ve heard that dreams of death are not really a bad thing at all. It’s kind of like the death card in a tarot deck, that it signifies a new beginning or an important change in your life and being. Sure enough, my life had changed a lot but only a few weeks later the virus hit the country I was in and things really started to change. Things started slowing to a grinding halt. Places shutting down, people becoming more wary of strangers and hitting social media to shout at everyone they couldn’t even look in the eyes out in the street.

That’s when I had another significant dream. It’s very hard to describe this one because it’s abstract and relates more to how I believe my brain works. Somehow I could see my life, more specifically the last two years of my life. I could twist and turn each aspect, and understand it. I suddenly felt like it somehow all made sense, and that I had come to the place I was meant to be at this particular time. And in amongst those well-organised squares I found something golden. There is no other word to describe it but pure, unadulterated joy. The kind of joy you feel as a child when you are simply dumb and happy. The kind of joy that has no reason, and no strings attached.

After I woke up, I came to the rather sad realisation that this was a feeling I hadn’t felt since I was a child. I hadn’t had a particularly happy childhood, but I guess I hadn’t realised that, already in those early years, I had started to look for happiness elsewhere. I had found it of course — in music, in friends and in crushes. But it was never something that came from me. It was always conditional and could always be taken away at any instant, just like a loved one can die and leave you at any moment in time. There was never any safety, never any assurance that this happiness would still be there tomorrow.

I suppose what I took from that dream was that yes, it was still in me to feel that joy. It had just been hidden from view. And that I didn’t need any thing or any one to make me feel that. As a person, I still don’t think I have come to terms with the magnitude of that realisation. It is hard to kill old habits, but I’m definitely going to work for it. Today I am so glad I didn’t get that new phone. I actually don’t really get much at all these days. As we have been staying in our homes during this crisis, a lot of things kind of naturally fall by the wayside. And I’ve found that I enjoy living life this way. Of course, I am looking forward to being able to go back outside and see my friends and family. Hug people, feel the warmth of another human body.

But looking at this period of time in our larger history, I think we are heading towards a good place. A place that is full of potential. Of people waking up to the fact that most of the things we see out there do not really matter. Being able to walk and feel fresh air in our lungs, hearing birds tweet or feeling the sand between your toes. Those are the things that matter, and they will always be here. Well, that’s not entirely true. If the world had continued along its current path, we would only have about 8 years before climate conditions started getting catastrophic. Not only foryou and me, for humans, but for all living things on our planet.

Now we know that we can actually stop those developments. Just as we hear of the oil-producing states cutting production by 10% as if overnight, we know that that cut might had just as well been 90%. We know that we can still survive without that trip to the Alps or that dream beach. We know that we can ask friends to go shopping for food. Our parents know that they can rely on us to help them or even just stop by with a friendly smile. There are so many things that we have taken for granted about life, that could just as easily have been extremely different. These are circumstances. And if you have also been spending these weeks, months or whatever they are in your country, mulling things over — you know that this is true.

So there’s no point pressing the argument anymore, campaigning towards politicians or posting polemic blurbs on social media. We know that social media is a tool for companies and states to monitor us. In many countries users have given up their rights and privacy in the name of stopping the spread of the virus. Will we ever get our innocence back? Somewhere there is someone who potentially knows everything about you. We need to let that go, because that battle is already lost. What we can do is think about the future. Who do we want to control our future? I think most people would answer that question with ’me’.

We still have several months left to think about how we make that future possible. No one has the answer yet. But we do know that it will start with love and respect. Just like you can respect something as faceless as a virus, we can respect the planet that we call home. The new world will not only have to be prepared for other possible pandemics, with viruses that (perhaps) have double or triple mortality rates. Society also needs to be prepared to deal with uncontrollable fires, flash-flooding and other natural responses from a world that is at the breaking-point. Needless to say, we need to move away from that edge if possible.

Do something pretty while you can

If everyone stopped thinking about what they needed and started thinking about they wanted the world to look like if they actually had a say, then perhaps we would realise that the only thing we need is a way to make what we want for the future a reality. Perhaps it is as simple as not wanting more people to die pointlessly. I know for sure that I do not want to see a dead person at any point in my life. No one should have to see the terrible effects of war or famine. Those are things we can fix. An unknown virus is not something we can fix. All we can do is close our doors and hope for the best.

We have now seen what happens in countries when most forms of consumption come to a standstill. There are still jobs for people who have been laid off from those industries. Healthcare, deliveries and care for our elders is going to keep many of them busy. Universal income might be a better model than a job market driven by a free trade. People aren’t stockpiling lifestyle goods and fast fashion. We know our clothes will last. We are stockpiling basic things we need, and many of those affluent enough are choosing to support the local businesses they want to still be around when this is over. Isn’t that the way it should have been from the start, we may ask ourselves.

It’s time for us to open up, not only about these things but about ourselves. Why not stop sharing other people’s (in truth, companies’) content and bytesize status updates and tweets that can never give an accurate view? Share your own stories and thoughts, over the phone or videochat, or in a book. Make a fanzine. Or read up on what a fanzine is. People used to make them in the 90s. When I was 18 my biggest dream in life was to make a fanzine together with my musical idol of the time. It didn’t really matter what was in it, because I knew it would be great. It was one of those millions of ideas on lists that never happened. I should have known my idol was a pessimist, with song titles like ”All the People I Like Are Those That Are Dead”. But I remain an optimist. If a wasn’t an optimist I would be a dead person now. And then no one would care about my desert island discs.