This week, over 70,000 people will be celebrating the life of Larry Harvey (pictured above), the founder of Burning Man, who died earlier this year. I would probably have been one of those people, if I weren’t living 8000 miles away.

I attended Burning Man for 15 consecutive years. I met, then married my wife, Laura Diamond there. When she was killed in a motorcycle accident, I took her remains back to burn in the Temple.

It seems like more people I know personally are dying faster. Old friends from my past. Younger friends who’s loss shocked and saddened us. I’m sure that social media plays a big part of this, but i, for one, am glad to know the information, even when it makes me cry.

I remember back when I was living in North Hollywood, there was a man who lived in the apartment below mine. His name was John and he came to the United States from Czechoslovakia, where he was in the film industry. He was in his 60s, and not in very good shape. He lived there alone, and I often saw him watching television as I passed by his door.

One day, as I came home, the coroner’s truck was parked front of our apartment building. As I watched as they wheeled John’s body away. He had had a heart attack. I thought to myself, “I hope I don’t die alone like that.”

As I write this, I am 63 year-old man living in a foreign country, a retiree from the film industry. I live in a small apartment by myself. I watch a lot of Netflix.

But, I’m not dead, so there’s that.

I don’t fear my own death as much as I am curious about it. Of course, no living person can say what the experience is like. That doesn’t stop our brains from trying to figure it out anyway, because that’s what they do; figure stuff out by making scenarios of possible outcomes given known variables. The problem comes when we allow ourselves to get “caught up” in these unreal scenarios and become emotionally charged by them, or as Eckhart Tolle would put it, you “become identified with your thoughts”. Your body then reacts to these thought as if they were happening in the present moment. Though the thoughts are not real, the fear is.

When I think about death, I do so mindfully. I am aware that I am thinking about death and that those thoughts are not who I am. With that understanding, I allow my brain to imagine, to create a knowingly nonexistent scenario, free of emotional attachment.

One thing I’m curious about is this: I believe that I’m not afraid of death now, but when the moment arrives, will I start crying like a baby, “Oh God, please don’t let me die!” I’d be like Gene Wilder in “Young Frankenstein” screaming, “Don’t you know a joke when you hear one?!

But then, that’s the beauty of not fearing death. If I live the rest of my life not fearing death in my mind and in my heart, and then the moment comes and I do freak out, so what? In the next moment, I won’t even exist!

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a “death wish”. The present moment is pretty good right now. I’m healthy. I live in a beautiful place with mostly friendly, happy people. Although I don’t have very much money, my expenses are low and have no financial stress. My time is my own, I can do what I want. That, which is a dream to many people, is my day-to-day. 

Would I feel the same way if my life were different? Would I fear death if I had children? Would I hope for death if I had a debilitating and painful disease? If I was in prison? The only true answer I can give is “Maybe”, but I know that I wouldn’t find the answer in any emotionally rooted past or future.

But, no matter the circumstances, the when the inevitable moment of my death comes, I want to welcome it with all that I am. It is the unifying aspect of our life on this planet, the greatest of human mysteries. I don’t want to spend that precious moment on thoughts of the past or fear of annihilation. I want my eyes (or my mind’s eye) to be open. I don’t want to miss that glimpse of what’s behind the curtain.