There are some things in life that one can fairly reasonably prepare for: say a test, performance, or athletic competition. Major life transitions generally do not fall in this category.

In a previous post, I discussed the problem of knowledge without first-person experience. A separate, but related topic, is the extent to which one can prepare for major life events with or, more likely, without previous first-person experience. Early in high school, I remember wondering whether I would be ready to leave home for college when it came time to do so. Though the act of leaving for college was bittersweet, I ended up being more than ready to go. What got me to that point was a confluence of life experiences, social influences, and maturation.

Going to college is one of those life transitions that’s comparatively easy - especially when you juxtapose it with things like marriage, parenthood, retirement, and death. It’s a basic argument, but I would assert that the ease of transition is directly proportional to how easily one can prepare for it. One can prepare for being an independent student in college by increasing the degree of independence in high school, which is typically what happens. One can prepare for marriage by spending lots of time together as a couple, which is typically what happens.¹ Preparing for the latter three transitions is a bit harder.²

I had the good fortune to tune in to Jim Fleming’s last episode of “To the Best of Our Knowledge,” a long-running program syndicated on NPR.³ The episode focused on the topic of retirement, with Fleming interviewing his friend, Parker Palmer, for his thoughts on retirement. At one point, they discuss how thinking of retirement inevitably includes thinking about mortality. Palmer notes:

The only way to go well into the big death - the death of your body, the death of your consciousness on this Earth - is to enter into the little deaths and practice dying.

Of course, practice makes perfect. But what did Palmer mean about practicing dying? He goes on to offer examples like failing to achieve a dream from his 20s, or losing a close relationship, or having a professional failure. If death is merely some combination of loss and failure, I guess Palmer’s examples make sense. However, it seems a bit too easy to equate a professional failure with death. After all, “no religion has ever achieved the status of a world religion without a doctrine of immortality.”⁴ Death is much more than the examples Palmer describes, and I think the sense that one can proactively prepare for it with “little deaths” is naive.

By association, the idea of fully preparing for a loved one’s death seems nearly impossible. With college, I was fairly confident that I would be ready when it came time. With death, I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s the irreversibility; if college disappointed, I could always transfer, but if the grief that comes with death is unbearable, there’s no way to get out of it.

A more reasonable (albeit darker) alternative to Palmer’s preparation via “little deaths” is the idea that life itself will take care of things:

Just as all political and historical change sooner or later disappoints, so does adulthood. So does life. Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.⁵

EDIT: Katherine shared this article with me; it discusses the decision to go to grad school in a similar light (and also has some choice quotes from Middlemarch).