So teach us to number our days

So teach us to number our days,
That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90:12 (NASB)

Don't worry, this isn't a Bible lesson per se (but I don't promise not to preach).

At some point between birth and adulthood, we learn that people die. And establish the corollary that we ourselves will someday die. I don't remember when I learned this; I imagine it might have been mildly traumatic.

I've experienced and noticed a strange, but common phenomenon concerning this knowledge. It's clear everybody knows they're going to die, but, in circumstances where that knowledge might be helpful or relevant to decision making, we seemingly act as if the opposite were true: we pretend that we are immortal.

For the wealthy, we work hard to accumulate more money than we and our offspring can conceivably spend across lifetimes.

We delay in apologizing to, and forgiving, those who matter to us. We wait to express our affections to crushes. We put off breaking up with toxic partners, or cutting off abusive family members. We suppress our deepest, most urgent concerns about where a relationship is going, seeking to "keep the peace." We procrastinate on leaving a stressful job. We tell ourselves, "Maybe next year," and push the potential fulfillment of our dreams and ambitions back and back and back until one day...

You wake and there's an unfamiliar ache in your back. Every joint seems to bend with just the faintest perceptible resistance. The wrinkles around your eyes and lining your cheeks have apparently quadrupled overnight. Walking up and down the stairs leaves you winded for an entire minute. And finally, you know you are mortal, and there's not much time left in you.

So it seems like there's a difference between knowing something, and knowing something. Everyone knows that the odds are stacked against you in a casino. But desperate gamblers don't know that.

The acceptance that something is true or factual is only the first step towards an understanding that produces informed actions.

Hence, teach us to number our days. Memento mori. Carpe diem. "The unexamined life is not worth living." For whatever reason, we have to be reminded or remind ourselves of our mortalities, of our finite time in this universe. The default is to ignore this critical boundary condition.

I occasionally come across things on the Internet that help instill a healthy reminder of mortality in me. Like Gina's Life in Weeks. Or this Reddit post. Suddenly the fog of feigned immortality clears to reveal with sharp contrast exactly how quickly our lives can pass us by. And then the fog rolls back in, until the following week we're comfortably dimly aware of the unforgiving steady tick of the clock.

Are we spending time? Or passing time?

Why this happens

My hypothesis is that the human brain has a very aggressive energy saver mode, kind of like a laptop that dims its display or goes to sleep after you don't input anything for 10 seconds.

When the brain detects that we are exhibiting a pattern of action or thinking that it has seen before, it starts delegating authority from the conscious mind to the unconscious mind (from the prefrontal cortex to the limbic system? psychologists please correct me if this is bollocks). Presumably, this energy saver mode is a process selected for evolutionarily because the brain is a very glucose hungry organ (consisting of 2% of our body weight but accounting for 20% of our total glucose consumption). So the extension of my hypothesis is that conscious thought requires more glucose than unconscious thought; so whenever possible, the brain will try to depend on unconscious thinking unless we tell it to do otherwise. As anecdotal evidence, I definitely feel hungrier after having worked at a difficult coding problem for hours versus passively browsing the internet for the same length of time.

Hence, habits.

Habits are precisely the category of behaviors that the brain has identified to be candidates for energy saving mode. And there are certain kinds of behaviors that are better suited for delegation to our unconscious mind – I think these generally align well with our notion of "muscle memory". Things like driving a car, or mowing the lawn, or mopping the floor, i.e. repetitive tasks which involve motor skills. There is, however, a sinister category of behavior enabled through technological advancements which are also an excellent candidate for turning on energy saver mode including: doomscrolling, browsing {Instagram feeds, TikTok's for you page, YouTube recommendations}. Media consumption ostensibly involves novel experiences, but the decision making process behind the pattern of consumption, I believe, is entirely subconscious. The companies that develop this class of digital applications are incentivized to optimize for maintaining user attention, after all: more eyes for a longer duration means more advertisements shown, and therefore more revenue.

In their optimization, they've produced exceptional user interfaces and recommendation algorithms which close the action to dopamine feedback loop to a degree that has likely never been seen before in human history. One swipe of a finger upwards 1 centimeter on a mobile device in a social media application surfaces a novel piece of rich media, complete with high resolution video and audio, that loads in fractions of a second, almost perfectly matching your interests.

The monkey brain has no chance at all.

But back to the main question: why do we forget that we are mortal? Well, the recognition of somewhat abstract truths is not a good candidate for unconscious thinking, no matter how important those truths are. Left to our own devices, we'll spend the majority of our day in some sort of habitual behavior, which for most people categorically excludes the knowing of our mortalities.

The practices of mindfulness and meditation are precisely working to cultivate a more balanced distribution of conscious and unconscious thought throughout our lives; lives which can include the time and space to reflect on, and remember the importance of kindness, love, wisdom, and yes, the importance of remembering that one day we are going to die.

Alain de Botton and the team over at The School of Life have expounded on the role of culture, religion, and art as reminders for us. With the brain so ready to flip into the unconscious mode of thought, it's helpful to have repeated exposure to things which bring to mind what is important. Traditions like annual festivals, burial rites, liturgies are external events with patterns intended to evoke an awakening from the unconscious to conscious grappling with truths that we have not known in a little while. Art, be it a painting, a story, a play, displays in a uniquely powerful way the impact and relevance of oft forgotten truths and virtues.

So remember that you will die. But rely not only on self-found motivation or discipline to remember. Engage with the stories and emotions passed down to us by countless people through their creative works. Foster mindfulness. And maybe most importantly, take care of your brain: eat well, sleep well, and exercise.

The healthier your brain, the better it can work with you when you need to cooperate in the conscious mode.