Staring at the Sun - a Book Review

“[D]espite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind. Perhaps, as Plato says, we cannot lie to the deepest part of ourselves.” - Pages 5-6

I haven’t written a book review in a long time, but after reading this existential, psychological masterpiece, I feel I must. 

I’ve always been tormented by the fact that I’m going to die one day. It began suddenly when I was eight years old. However, given I was raised Catholic, it was the terror of burning in hell for all eternity that consumed me. Thankfully, though, I started doubting the existence of God when I was 17. After some time, the doubt finally erupted in full fruition when I was 24, permitting me to completely come to my senses and stop believing in any of that eschatological nonsense. I became an atheist without any belief in the afterlife whatsoever (though I'd like to be wrong about that and am open to the possibility of one). 

My death terror then became about ceasing to exist completely and the universe going on and on forever and ever without me after I’m gone, blotting me out as if I never existed at all. It’s that thorough, unrelenting feeling of insignificance coupled with never being able to be aware of anything again that now gets me, and it’s only gotten worse with age (I’m turning 40 in July) due to the inexorable speed of time and my worldly-centred, fiery love of life. Leaving this world, and my mind ceasing for all eternity, absolutely terrifies me! The whole thing seems like a sick, twisted, impossible joke!

“The frightening thought of inevitable death, Epicurus insisted, interferes with our enjoyment of life and leaves no pleasure undisturbed. Because no activity can satisfy our craving for eternal life, all activities are intrinsically unrewarding. He wrote that many individuals develop a hatred for life - even, ironically, to the point of suicide; others engage in frenetic and aimless activity that has no point other than the avoidance of the pain inherent in the human condition.” - pg. 78

Something that’s always fascinated me is how people deal with their own mortality, which is why one of my favourite books of all time is The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. It’s so deep, razor sharp, eloquent and penetrating. So when I heard of Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death by Dr. Irvin D. Yalom, author of Existential Psychotherapy and When Nietzsche Wept, I simply had to get it, in the hope that it would help appease all this dreadful fear and anxiety within me while I delved deeper into a topic that I find absolutely enthralling. 

Well, I finished it on the train ride home yesterday, and it was a truly brilliant, unabashed look at death head-on. Dr. Yalom uses many of his case studies from personal sessions and successes with patients suffering from death terror and death anxiety. Sometimes he had to reveal to his patients, as it was revealed to him in doing so, that death anxiety was at the heart of what was the matter with them, the dilemma at their emotional and psychological core. Often their struggle with death was really just their struggle with regret and the fear of dying without fulfilling their lives. He also talks about close friends and mentors he’s had, and how they’d helped and learned from each other before they inevitably passed on. And his dream analyses of his patients are absolutely amazing, almost as if executed with acute precision. 

One thing I really enjoyed and was delighted to see was that he talks a lot about Epicurus and Nietzsche in it, two philosophers I love greatly, especially Nietzsche. He uses their existential thoughts on mortality, living, and nothingness post-death in his therapy sessions with his patients who are having death anxiety, experiencing a life crisis or are at a crossroads. He even reads Nietzsche’s eternal return passage with the demon and the spider to his patients who might gain value from it, and often do, which then accelerates the work of the sessions.

One Nietzschean theme is the annihilation of the dread of death through the complete consummation of one’s life through self-cultivation and living life to the fullest. I love that, as it naturally rings so true for me.

As for it helping me - though he offers several ways of thinking and being to help allay death terror (none of them involving an afterlife) - it was the reading through of the book itself that gave me a heightened sense of peace with my own finiteness, which I really started to feel on page 210 or 211 (it’s 277 pages in total up till the end of the Afterword). But such a powerful book as this - at times humorous, by the way - can only affect everyone differently.

“Let’s not conclude that death is too painful to bear, that the thought will destroy us, that transiency must be denied lest the truth render life meaningless. Such denial always exacts a price - narrowing our inner life, blurring our vision, blunting our rationality. Ultimately self-deception catches up with us. 

“...raw death terror can be scaled down to everyday manageable anxiety. Staring into the face of death, with guidance, not only quells terror but renders life more poignant, more precious, more vital.” - pg. 276

I agree. And, quaintly, as I walked home in the new area that I live in here in Tokyo, I came across statues that I started taking photos of and which led me to a cemetery that I then proceeded to walk through, through the nature that was intertwined with it. And though my senses were heightened, I felt at peace. 

Rating: five stars!