Confronting Mortality: Embracing the Truth We Tend to Deny

People commonly relate to death through complete denial. We live as though we will go on forever and behave as if death happens only to others and will never happen to us. 

Anyone who denies something that will unquestionably happen to them is likely denying many other truths as well. A person who cannot use such a central fact to draw meaning into life may not be fully alive or may be living behind layers of psychological defenses. These defenses are exhausting and damaging.

How does awareness of death affect us? Are we conscious of it? Does it influence our behavior? And if not, why not?

Remember Your Creator While You Are Young

Shlomo HaMelech writes: “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years arrive when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them.’ Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain. On the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the men of strength are bent, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows grow dim… and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says Kohelet, all is vanity.”

The Sages explain:

• The keepers of the house are the ribs

• The men of strength are the legs

• The grinders are the teeth

• Those who look through the windows are the eyes

What Does the Fact of Death Mean for Our Lives?

What does it mean that every one of us will one day pass on? How deeply does this awareness influence our behavior toward ourselves? Our sense of the value of life? Our understanding of time? Our willingness to give to others?

“When a person passes away, only mitzvot and good deeds accompany them.”

How does awareness of life’s finitude affect the value we place on power, money, and honor? How often do we allow our consciousness to truly experience the finality of life on a daily or yearly basis?

Have you ever considered that at some future point in history, everyone living on your street today will no longer be alive?

Why Is This Not Part of Our Everyday Reasoning?

In financial decisions, for example, is it really justified to accumulate so much, go into debt, and leave behind endless possessions for heirs?

In marriage, does it make sense to leave a spouse burdened with resentment over petty arguments? Is it logical to hurt the person who may one day care for us in illness?

With children, is it not far more important to leave a legacy of love for Torah and wisdom than a legacy of suffering caused by anger and rigidity?

In friendships, does the need to win arguments still matter when nothing of that victory will remain?

Our Astonishing Ability to Deny Reality

Logically, the fact that life is temporary should form the basis of decisions in every area of life, and yet reality proves otherwise.

We can sit shiva for seven days, refrain from music, and observe mourning customs for someone who will never return to this world, yet still fail to incorporate the finality of life into our daily choices. This is an astonishing capacity for denial.

Three Levels of Denial

The Hebrew root of the word meaning denial, כ.ח.ש reflects three forms of denial:

1. Minimization- Acknowledging death as a fact but treating it as insignificant.

2. Legal denial- Refusing to admit the facts.

3. Falsehood- Treating reality as if it were a lie.

Why Do We Deny Death?

The less seriously we take death, the less seriously we take life and its spiritual depth. Denying death is effectively removing God from our awareness, ignoring the One who set both our birth and our departure.

Although this denial is illogical, it feels internally consistent. It reveals how powerful our fear of finality truly is. Living with the awareness that life is temporary feels threatening. It forces us to abandon childish ways of understanding reality.

Western culture reinforces this denial by obsessively promoting youth, beauty, strength, and pleasure, distracting us from confronting aging and death.

When Absence Becomes Sacred

When people lose something precious, such as a position, health, youth, or a loved one, they often elevate what is gone into something sacred. Life begins to revolve around what no longer exists.

“I was healthy and now I am not.”
“I was young and now I am not.”

In doing so, we become people defined by absence. We lose the presence of life itself. The tragedy is that over sanctifying what is missing drains all value from what exists.

Fear Magnifies Absence

Fear turns absence into the center of our lives. Denied death becomes the dark well from which much emotional suffering flows.

Paradoxically, the more we acknowledge life’s finitude, the less power fear holds over us. Awareness brings light, which transforms what is frightening into a source of vitality.

How Awareness Changes Everything

When we truly accept that life is finite, everything changes:

• Our relationship with money

• Our pursuit of honor and power

• The meaning of mitzvot

• The distinction between generosity and miserliness

• Between taking and giving

• Between the trivial and the essential

This awareness strengthens our eternal identity as souls entrusted with a mission.

Choosing Life Through Finality

Recognizing our finitude does not diminish life. It intensifies it.

Every moment becomes precious. We stop wasting time, burning time, and fighting because we feel like it. Every mitzvah matters because it is what remains forever.

Paradoxically, life gains meaning precisely because it is finite.

When we accept life’s finality, decisions become easier and clearer. Choices shift toward immediate realization and higher quality desires.

Rather than despair, this awareness fuels courage, creativity, reconciliation, and purposeful change.

We stop reacting to external pressures and begin acting from our inner essence. We are no longer soldiers in a survival battle but creators living from within.

Understanding that life ends allows us to truly begin.

Simple Truth and Deeper Truth

There is a simple truth: I eat an apple.

There is a deeper truth: the apple carries divine energy that sustains me so I can fulfill my purpose.

Those who grasp life’s finitude live the deeper truth. They experience reality not just as it appears but as it truly is. The recognition that life is finite is not darkness, but illumination.

When fear recedes, joy grows. When denial fades, clarity emerges. When the end is acknowledged, life becomes infinitely more alive.

Whoever understands their finitude will be happier, because every moment becomes more valuable.