The first time I acknowledged that there was something called “death” was when I was 5. It was at my aunt’s funeral; my mom and other aunts/uncles were crying hard over my dead aunt’s coffin. It was the first time I saw many adults crying. I thought only kids cried. At that time, all I knew was that if a person was dead, he couldn’t eat, couldn’t talk, couldn’t see his family and loved ones, couldn’t go anywhere but had to stay underground in a coffin. And I didn’t want that.
After a few months, with the thought about death nagging at me, I told my mom and sisters that I didn’t want to die. My mom, not knowing how to respond, told me to go to sleep.
Luckily, I was just a kid. I forgot about it soon after and continued playing, eating, talking, and going around.
From then on, death became less and less scary as I grew, and simply “going to sleep” would remove the thought from my mind.
One morning 13 years later, I went to the university to attend an event, and because the school was tiny, I needed to park my motorbike at the nearby hospital. It was a hospital for kids. It was crowded, people sleeping on the ground, under the trees, waiting for their turn to get their treatments. I saw kids crying, their parents taking care of them. And I was, once again, reminded about death. It was still there, no matter if I thought about it or not.
After the event, I came back to the hospital, decided to stay for a little while, going around to make some observations. I realized that death was not something that came to adults only, but to kids as well.
I then made it a habit to visit the hospital biweekly. I didn’t know exactly what I was seeking — it might have been the feeling of gratefulness, I guessed.
People act differently when they face death. My uncle, after being diagnosed with “bone disease,” decided to quit drinking… for about a month. Same with my colleague. He drank and smoked a lot, barely exercised. During the annual company health check-up, high uric acid and high blood fat were detected. The following week: all chicken breast, no alcohol, daily runs. The week after? Back to the old habits.
When people see death, they fear it. They swear to do anything just to avoid death coming, or at least to push it further into the future. And when it’s already in the future, they rush into it again. There’s a reason behind it. In the book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Robert Sapolsky explains that the brain directs us to the most urgent needs of the body. When we’re in peril, the whole body is ordered to get out of the situation (running away from a lion, sending cells to heal the bleeding, etc.). If we’re healthy, there’s no need to care about it—so we focus on long-term goals: buying a house, claiming a social status, and so on.
As a 20-something, I am bombarded with successful young people out there making 10x more than me, having what I might need to work my whole life to attain, while seeing my parents getting old. That’s the worst feeling of all. I tried to rush into “success” (whatever you might define it) not once, not twice, but many times. After sleeping 4–5 hours a day, skipping meals, squeezing out every minute in my day for a week or so, I got sick (physically). My body just couldn’t afford to let me do that much.
There was a time when I felt death closer than ever. After donating my blood at the Vietnamese National Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion, I got a health test as a gift. There was an abnormal index. I did a quick Google (don’t laugh) and it said that the index might indicate stomach cancer. From the horizontal line, death suddenly came into my eyesight, in front of me. I asked my brother-in-law (who was a doctor) to take me to a gastroscopy the next day. My stomach was… healthy (phew). It traumatized me for quite a long time, and I decided to never trade off my health for anything — be it wealth or social status, let alone a movie, a game, or doomscrolling.
I still feel the urge sometimes. Whenever I see somebody “more successful,” more talented, or generally better than me, I feel that I’m not working hard enough. But still, with that, I know I can only play within the restricted circumstances of my life.
I still go to the hospital, though not as frequently as before. It’s a good way for me to remind myself about death — that I don’t want that, at least not now. I want to be successful, to travel the world, to live a socially appraised life. But more than that, I want to eat, to talk, and to see my family and loved ones, as long as I can.