How to Not Die

Nothing kills a casual conversation quite like death. We don’t know how to talk about it, yet it permeates the back of our minds, squirming out whenever we misplace our phones. If only we could be more like an immortal superhero so that fear would just disappear. This isn’t about finding better ways to talk about death, that’s much too difficult and scary. This is about looking at the data and finding the best ways to not die.

Just Look at the Data

Too many people are afraid of the wrong thing. Movies like Jaws have fixed it in our minds that sharks are going to eat you whenever you step foot into the ocean. Yet, only about 4 people a year die from sharks. What animal should you be afraid of? Mosquitos. Mosquitos kill more people than we kill each other! Granted, this is the whole human population. If you live in a 1st world country, you’ll be a lot less likely to die from a Mosquito than this figure might show, but the point still stands. We fear a lot of the wrong things.

A lot of that misplaced fear goes into working towards the wrong things. A disproportionate number of people are dying from non-communicable diseases such as heart disease and cancer. Especially if you live in a rich country like the US, the likelihood skews even higher. For example, the media covers the scariest ways to die, homicide, and terrorism. They account for almost 60% of death coverage, yet in reality, they occupy less than 1% of the cause of death. It’s apparent in what we Google. Not enough people are talking about, and taking steps to, mitigate heart disease. The fact that it’s the leading cause of death in the US and no one is Googling it or covering it in the news is crazy to me. When people have a heart attack, it comes as a surprise rather than thinking, huh, it’s the most common way people die. It’s not to discredit the fears that can come from terrorism or homicide, but rather dial in our fears appropriately.

Another way to think about this is in a positive sense. It’s exciting to buy a lottery ticket and hope of winning thousands or potentially even millions, yet buying lottery tickets is not a personal finance plan. It’s fun to dream about winning the lottery (even though lottery winners are, on the whole, a lot more depressed and miserable than they were before they won the lottery) but it’s important to keep realistic expectations of winning the lottery and not letting those sway our decisions. In the same way, it’s okay to be afraid of dying in a terrorist shark attack, but don’t let that get in the way of going to the beach with your friends and family.

Not Above the Median

In the US, there’s a tendency to proclaim that we are better than average. In our society of individualism, being “average” is demonized. It’s firmly ingrained, even 40 years ago. In a famous, misquoted paper by Ola Svenson, he surveyed students and found that 93% of US students considered themselves to be in the top 50% of drivers. It may be humbling to admit, but statistically speaking, you may be in the average.

Getting ourselves to disconnect from that identity shift brings us closer to addressing the real issues. Admitting that we may not be an outlier in healthy living can help us tackle the hard work behind changing our lifestyles to avoid heart disease and cancer.

Living is More than Not Dying

Unfortunately for us, staying alive is just the first step. Stealing from Peter Attia, life’s not worth living if you’re disconnected and miserable. This isn’t to say life will always be easy or enjoyable. Yet, the struggle is what gives our life meaning. It’d be miserable to live forever.

If you watch Logan, aside from it being one of the best superhero movies to come out of the last 20 years, it shows the curse of living too long. When you live forever, it’s miserable. You lose a sense of meaning and connectedness. When the people you love eventually pass on, it becomes almost impossible to build new relationships with a new generation of people. It’s only when he meets back up with Professor X and Laura (spoiler alert) that he can sit down for a meal and enjoy himself for what seems like the first time.

Death is what gives our lives meaning. To know that our time is limited forces us to make decisions. One of the few things I remember from college is etymology, which is the study of the origin of words. Decide, which comes from Latin, means to “cut off”. When we make a decision, we are cutting some other options. And when we don’t have enough time to pursue all the options in the world, we must be intentional in making the right ones. We can start by being afraid of the right things and take steps to address those fears.

-Derek