So I recently heard someone say “You’re born alone, you die alone” Like this is an incredibly common idiom. Aka you need you be self-reliant because your experience of birth and death are not shared with anyone. When you leave and enter this world is something only you can experience. It’s basically used to emphasize individual agency.
Now people who spout this phrase probably acknowledge there are people in your life and both bookends of your existence. But they disregard their meaning, because they can’t share your experience. So taking a step back. This is bullshit just because someone can’t share the exact experience that only you experience does not take away from the shared experience.
Let’s take birth. When my kids were born it was a room full of people. Not just Mom and Dad. Their was a doula. There was our actual doctor. There were like eight nurses. An Anesthesiologist, another doctor. There must’ve been 15 people in that room. The absolute second our child was out of the womb someone was touching them (outside of being weighed of course lol) My kids were surrounded with love and exhaustion from the second they were born till today. Every person in that room had been born at some point (I hope) so the shared experience was there. So why take this cynical view you are born alone. It’s just patently untrue even at the absolute worst case your mom is still there.
Now let’s look at death. Sure, everyone in the room you are with has never died (again hopefully) but most people understand death. Even to the same level of the person who’s actually dying since they also have never died before. Now I will admit there is a possibility you will die alone. In fact, my Dad was in an empty room when he died. But that’s just because he decided his time to pass was when Victoria and I went to get food. He held on waiting for us to appear, and when he passed, he did it privately. Despite him having several Alzheimer’s and being unconscious I truly believe this was intent. He still was surrounded by people that cared about him that day.
So, the deeply cynical “you are born alone, you die alone” fuck that noise. You can be born to people who love and care about you, and you can die surrounded by people who love and care about you. The relationships you build to get there do matter. The fact that no one is born or dies in the exact same way you do, is just a nothing statement. Who the fuck cares. I certainly will be focusing on the 99.9999999% of my life filled with love than the one second of my actual death.