Ernest Becker's romantic solution to mortality anxiety

Ernest Becker's Romantic Solution

The Romantic Solution to Death

Alfonzo: My life is over.

Sophia: Why do you say that, Al? I know that you didn't make the track team, but it's not the end of the world.

Alfonzo: Yes it is. For most of my life, track was all I cared about. By not making the cut, what am I going to succeed in, how am I going to be the best at something?

Sophia: Why do you have to be the best in something?

Alfonzo: I just do, that's all. When I'm walking around on campus, what are people going to say about me, if I'm not the fastest person in the school? In high school, I was a track star. Now, all of these guys are so much faster than me, I can't compete. Jeez, first Sharon leaves me for another guy, and now getting cut, it's too much to bear during my first semester of college.

Sophia: So, Romantic, then cosmic heroism, is the various solution you have proposed for your immortality project?

Alfonzo: Huh?

Sophia: It's like Ernest Becker says in the Denial of Death. Lots of people think they have to be a hero, the best, in some way, even if it is just at -- I don't know -- Nintendo or pinball (Becker 217). Without a sense that we will live on as a hero, the distractions that we use to drown out the knowledge of our coming demise can seem futile. If someone is a hero or the best at something, they feel as if they have created something permanent. But how many heroes are remembered, really -- even Alexander, Galileo, or Jesse Owen, for that matter -- their images are remembered, not truly who they are as a person. It is better to enjoy your life in the here and now, and make meaning out of if on a moment-by-moment basis than squandering your life, being miserable, trying to be a hero, or even pinning all your hopes on a girl and seeing that girl as the reason for living. Human beings and athletic prowess will both disappoint you, because they will fall short of your expectations -- neither are perfect, and neither will erase the fact that we are all going to die.