Proust: How We Remember to Live

In 1930, a French paper called L’Intransigeant formulated an hypothetical question and sent it to several French celebrities. The question:

“An American scientist announces that the world will end, or at least that such a huge part of the continent will be destroyed, and in such a sudden way, that death will be the certain fate of hundreds of millions of people.

If this prediction were confirmed, what do you think would be its effects on people between the time when they acquired the aforementioned certainty and the moment of cataclysm?

Finally, as far as you’re concerned, what would you do in this last hour?”

If the news of a sure and imminent death landed on our doorstep tomorrow, people would put down drugs. Leave drinks on the bar counter. Cease all war and look up to the sky. Watch the colors unfold in the sunset, hug our children close, show kindness to strangers. We would reconcile differences, forgive to a great capacity, and look deeply into the eyes of one another. Knowing that we awaited obliteration, we’d understand an air of appreciation for the time we enjoyed on Earth.

I do not wish for the end of our time on Earth. But I do wish is that we internalized the fragility of life. Our time here seems infinite until it is not. Our possibility to be, do, create, love, all exist on bartered time.

You and I will die. Of this, I am certain. One character to own. One body before we become a part of the ground.

I wish we could appreciate the nature of life, the depth to our joys and miseries. The collective suffering, the nobility of daring to live.

I echo the sentiments of Marcel Proust, who said:

“I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful if we were threatened to die. Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies it — our life — hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly.

But let all this threaten to become impossible forever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah! If only the cataclysm doesn’t happen this time, we won’t miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India.

The cataclysm doesn’t happen, we don’t do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire. And yet we shouldn’t have needed the cataclysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening.”

— Marcel Proust (excerpt from “How Proust Can Change Your Life,” Alain de Botton)

For a long time in my life, all I wanted was to die. But there is no going around grief, only through it.

Now, my life is far from perfect. It does not align with the life I expected to live, and there are still many hardships I must overcome. But I love it. I feel so fucking grateful to be alive.

I am taking my time. I am stumbling, but getting up. I am not going blindly into the night — I am following my own internal compass.

Why am I unafraid to live an unplanned life?

Because when you come close to losing your life, you lose your fear of living.