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my dad died 20 days ago. I miss him so much. I didn't miss him at first, I guess because he was just here. This feels like my ten second treadmill run. There is probably a cap, But right now it feels like I will miss him 10% more every day that passes until the end of time. I don't think he has anything he needs to redeem himself for or regret, and I know his life was full. He has such a wonderful soul and was my most trusted comrade and political confidant growing up. But because of this, he was the sole soul directly responsible for so much of the goodness of my life, he was so tied to how I went about my day, that every day without him feels worse than the last. Thanks for all your hard work Joel, I enjoyed the vid :)
I recently read Van Goghs letters to his brother and in one he wrote, “Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”
My mom was terrified of death and went to extremes to avoid it. She believed, "law of attraction" style, that people only die because they accepted it as inevitable. She wouldn't eat cooked food or keep a microwave in the house because carcinogens and radiation cause cancer. She died of a rare and aggressive cancer at 49, no chemo, and on the strictest vegan diet any dying person could subject themselves to. To this day I can't help but think of her as a ghost, floating around beating herself up for all the things she did to draw a premature death to herself. In my brain I'm constantly trying to pull her out of her obsessive life fixation, like "Mom, there's no do-over. When do you finally let it go and give yourself time to enjoy flying, or scaring people away from prime real estate, or appearing in your grandchildren's' dreams? You're such a young ghost, and you're wasting your afterlife."
Yoo, your content made me question and subsequently abandon a very toxic Christian faith. I love your recent video and am looking forward to the movie!
My best friend ended her own life around 8 months ago. In a note she had told her parents to give to me, she said that she had been planning to end her life for around 1 month. My brain is so against the idea that the only thing that truly mattered in her life was how it ended, yet every conversation that mentions her is about that topic, or at the very least is tainted by it, forever. I appreciate your interpretation that Van Gogh's paintings were not all a journey to his suicide, but instead a part of a person who was much more than his method of death. Thank you for this video.
I had a great friend, a poet like me, and his writing was often dark in nature but he was a savant with words. When he killed himself, everyone would view his poetry through the lens of his suicide. Knowing the man while he was alive, that's not at all what he would have wanted. It's hard to lift that veil for others, and I understand why, but life is about the journey, not the destination. And I am getting a tattoo sometime next year of the lines from a poem me and him collaborated on so his memory as a writer can live on through the brilliance of his words when people ask about my tattoo or just read it without the context of his suicide. And that's the way I think he would want his writing to be appreciated. I say all that because finding a way of memorializing her that doesn't include that context might also be something that interests you. People are more than their endings. But it's up to the people left to talk about the middle parts of their life story.
@@NichrysalisThe same was often deduced about Francesca Woodman, readings of all of her work has sort of been somewhat debased because of that. Her ending her life had no impact on my interpretations of her photos because when I first saw her work I knew nothing of her personal life. I just saw these gorgeous photographs that seemed to appeal to some sensibility I couldn't quite describe. The photos aren't sad, maybe sanguine, sensuous, dreamily abstruse but never inherently depressing. When the public learns of someone taking their own life, their art and actions seem to be subject to oversimplified revisionism or that any joy in their life that they expressed must have been them hiding something. When in reality we are all hiding something, there is always something unsaid between two or more people, a malady that can't be expressed or made understood to others or oneself, a problem that at one minute seems to swallow you up only to be marginal a second later. The only difference is that someone that ends it all could've only been slightly more impulsive than another who didn't. It's beautiful to hear that you are memorializing your friend in ink, I'm sure they would've liked that!
Sorry to hear that. I've lost 3 friends to suicide and it never gets easier. By that I mean it hurts just as bad with each one. The pain does slowly fade, but never completely. Just know you are not to blame in any way. As someone who's dealt with suicidal thoughts my whole life and even made attempts, I can tell you the dedication we have to dying when in that mindset is impossible to overcome from the outside. All you can do is be the best friend possible and be a light in the extreme darkness they're facing
I lost my dad to suicide about a year ago. Aside from the 'regular' grief of loss, now every highlight, every childhood memory, every thing that reminds me of the positives of him, comes distorted through the lens of knowing how the story ended. I try to reconnect, and I can value those moments like you can value the paintings of Van Gogh. But there's that fact of knowing how it ends that injects this undertone, that makes the pattern-seeking in our brains look for some kind of foreshadowing, even in the moments that didn't strike you as being a premonition for what was going to happen. I read his journals, and like with the Bell Jar, you read someone's lows and have in your mind this expectation, from books and movies and shows, that the low point only exists so that someone can come out of it. We're primed to feel like the lows only exist as setup for triumph. It's not supposed to end when the character is at their lowest. Sometimes it does.
Mine too a few years back, and yes I relate to what you say, it's so tempting to frame every memory now in terms of premonition but life is just all kinds of things that happen, not all of them connected to someone's death. Take care of yourself, I've found this grief to be the most complicated thing I've ever had to deal with.
Wow your words were so profound and really struck my soul. I’m so sorry for your loss. I hope you are an author or in some capacity an artist because you have a gift for writing.
I'm sorry for your loss. Have you heard of the indie movie AFTERSUN? Your words reminded of me its story. I think it captures the feelings of nostalgia tinted grief perfectly and maybe it can help the process of grieving a parent.
It was striking to me when you mentioned we almost always see Christ depicted as either a baby or a dying/dead man. We not only never see him come back to life but we never see him just living his life. As a secular person with cultural ties to Christianity who is searching for meaning in my own life I often wish that Christianity showed us more about how he lived.
That's all the Catholic church. The bible isn't as focused on that aspect as that sick organization would like you to believe. In fact they openly ignore the words he said and go against many of his ideals... idk what my point is here, just that religion is not the church and the church is definitely not religion.
There’s this one painting of Jesus, Menneskesønnen/The Son of Man by Christian Skredsvig, that felt like a kick to the gut the first time I saw it. It depicts Jesus in a 19th century Norwegian village. He looks just like everyone else, and he’s in the background and slightly off-center; the first figure you notice in the painting is not him, but a sick girl being carted in to be healed. I’ve always struggled to fully explain what, exactly, I found so impactful about that painting. The explanation I’ve told myself is that it’s just an outstanding depiction of my own service-based Christian theology. But this video and this comment make me think it’s something more basic: it’s one of the few paintings that actually depicts the living Jesus Christ the way he would have been perceived by those around him.
I mean, have you read a bible? I don’t want to be insensitive but you frankly, don’t know what your talking about. Pretty much every story in the bible about Jesus is about his life. Not his death. This comment blows my mind at it’s closed mindedness and poor perspective tbh
@@artlover282 "Depicted" as in depicted in paintings and sculptures, specifically visually. Strange to get so worked up about the criticism when you clearly don't even understand what they were saying.
That bit about having watched the musical and wanting to talk to your father again so you can tell him why you hate it, very visceral to me. Damn. Thank you.
My dad is dead a few days ago. A furious prostate cancer. He never suffered and died with his family at home. Less than 20% die at home and many suffers from physical or mental pain and the fact that I'm in the medical field helped me alot. In my country health is "free" (collective systems are more efficient and cost less than private/individual healthcare systems) so we did not pay much. Also I can have a large part of my precedent salaries during unemployment due to politics precedent generation voted so I could stay at home and heal him for 2 years without working officially. I hope someday everybody in world will access to death with dignity and comfort even in poverty. Contrary to our swiss neighboor we didnt legalized euthanasia yet and I hope we will do it someday. For the moment, the maximum we can do is injecting morphine and midazolam even if the risk of death if very high but it is not the same. His death was less painful for him and for us (it was not brutal and he was 72), he hated being hospitalized. And I did not wanted to see my father dying in loneliness like many elders do unfortunately
Sorry for your loss. My mom died this summer of breast cancer, which she fought for almost ten years. She worked until she knew she stopped treatment, and we're only comfortable because of the life insurance check.
my coworker died in an accident two weeks ago at age 20. i’ve recently been afraid of how quickly everything can change, how one small thing can change everything hugely, for better or for worse. i’m also very young, and the idea of death is still really not something i’m comfortable with, and i’m sure my coworker wasn’t comfortable with it either, she didn’t get the chance to even think about it before it happened. her funeral is next week, and all my other coworkers are working as normal, and i’m scared to go back to work and see people pretending it didn’t even happen, that someone who was alive is not alive anymore. i’m scared to go to the funeral and talk to my other coworkers about banal things, and hear people talk about how she was a great and talented person, instead of screaming about how fucking unfair it is that she died at age 20, and here we all are, still living and experiencing things. i’m tired of pretending that death doesn’t just fucking suck. i’m an english student, and i enjoy finding meaning in things and in life. but i cant find meaning in this.
The funeral has probably passed at this point. But I just wanted to say that I hope you find a way out of feeling this pressure to pretend that her death or death in general doesn't fucking suck. You don't need to pretend that. Your coworkers or your boss may expect you to pretend but you don't have to fulfill their expectations. When people act this unbothered after a death it is usually because they lack the strength or the ability to think these thoughts that you are thinking right now. It can be overwhelming to deal with these thoughts and some people react to that by blocking them out. It's a way of surviving, but it makes for a situation that is unjust to you. You don't deserve to feel like your grief is forbidden. Your feelings are understandable and justified. I'm sorry for your loss.
i feel and felt the same way when my younger cousin died last year. It made me so mad and scared, and I am so mad and scared. the fuck am i supposed to do with these feelings though. i think the worst or maybe best part is that life goes on for others. my cat will still need fed tomorrow, my car will need gas. i hate it but it's true and it kind of helps dull the pain. until you remember it again. sorry that's not very helpful. i just wanted to say i know how you feel and it kind of gets better
I don't know if it's my place to pontificate on why or whether death is okay, but I'm only a few years older than you and I've come to mostly find peace. That world that you were born into and found so much to love in before you ever knew of death, had formed through the tragedy of countless trillions of deaths, counting non-humans. Now that you've seen the irreconcilable injustice of someone who passed away before their time, has it really changed anything? Of course it's wrong, but how could life exist without wrong? Can you even imagine a world made up completely of "right" things? I can't. I know this might not end up resonating for you in the way it does for me, but all I can say is that I owe so much of my peace to the Dao De Jing of Lao Tzu. It's the truest philosophy I've found.
I lost a friend in 2018, my cousin in 2020, and my uncle in 2023, all of them unexpectedly and all young. I worked in the same place as my uncle and found myself bewildered and wanting to scream out in the middle of the store "how can you people just continue on like the world hasn't changed?? Why do my family and friends keep dying??" I too have fears about the sudden nature of loss and death. How it can happen at anytime, to anyone, for no reason. The cruelty of randomness. I remind myself that I have also been the ignorant person not knowing that someone's life was falling apart. We have been the ignorant people living our lives as genocides happen elsewhere. I have no words of comfort for you, but you're not alone in these feelings.
What makes me a fan of Carousel is the song "If I Loved You", which is my favorite showtune by a long, long mile. It's one of the most beautiful songs in the world to me. The futility is the point. They predict their whole romance with that gut wrenching song - they're never able to tell each other I love you. They knew from their first meeting they wouldn't be able to express their feelings, and how detrimental that would be, and yet they went ahead and followed the script anyway. Just like Billy, who knows meeting his daughter that this is his one chance to do better, knows what the wrong choice is, and still can't bring himself to succeed. I do think abusers can change, and maybe even redeem themselves, but it takes years if not decades of work. Maybe Billy could have changed, could have done better, but a day wasn't enough time. He could have told his wife he loved her, he knew he felt that way, knew he should have done it, but he didnt until it was too late. One of the bleakest part of human experience for me is knowing what you're about to do is wrong, and just not being able to hit the stop button. Knowing full well you're being cowardly or cruel and knowing before you even act that you'll regret it. I haven't seen another piece of media really tackle that experience. Carousel is strange and gross and sad. It's always really hit me
"One of the bleakest part of human experience for me is knowing what you're about to do is wrong, and just not being able to hit the stop button" . I'm not sure why but that really hit me. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
I often think of how different I could be, how my entire personality could theoretically change in the blink of an eye, how much better or worse I could be all of a sudden. And yet, I stay the same, and I often think of what motivates these decisions we don't even take on how to act, even when we're thinking about them.
My mom died in front of me, after the better part of a decade fighting cancer. I am not afraid of death, I have no hopes or believes about it and I don't want to be dead - but am not afraid of it. I am afraid of dying, though I'm afraid of the process, I've seen how gruesome and unbearable it can be and I am terrified of it.
I was just thinking about how far removed the fear of dying is from the fear of death. I'm not afraid of death at all, but as someone with a cancer predisposition, I've gone to what some would call extraordinary lengths to have a tiny bit of (maybe illusory) control over what doesn't kill me.
I don't think I've ever thought of separating dying from death. I don't think I'm scared of death itself as long as I am remembered after, the idea of one not dying until they're forgotten and all that. But the idea of dying truly does haunt me more than me becoming dead, the pain, fear and surprise at suddenly having limited time that results in death really does seem scarier than the state of being a corpse, to me that is.
this truly felt like a genre of essay that I havent seen as much in video form. i think it was beautiful, and touching, and tragic in a way that feels so banal. thanks
Yo, I got you man, I got a playlist with this genre! 11 videos so far and I'm slowly collecting more. I call it "Phobia Playlist" on my channel. My fav video out of the bunch is Fear of Cold by Jacob Geller. I watched it 3 times by now. There's something I find very appealing when someone makes a video essay about a fear. Like a previous comment said about Solar Sands, I got his video called "Thalassophobia" in that playlist.
I also lost my dad, almost 3 years ago to a drug overdose. I was the one who found his body because I went to deliver his Christmas present on Dec. 26th, worried that I didn't hear from him on Christmas day. He lived in a housing complex for addicts and people just off the street. It was a pretty miserable place to live, essentially one tiny bedroom for each person and all their things including a fridge for food. They experience deaths there quite often as you might imagine. It's abysmal, and just another reason why my city should be ashamed of itself. Idk what else to say.
Man. The wanting a Carousel conversation rings so true. The last conversation I had with my grandfather was me telling him about seeing the movie Cats. He didn’t have a very expressive face, but he seemed… puzzled, in a fun way. Sometimes I think about the fact that our last conversation was on something so stupid, but there’s also beauty and humanity in that. Thank you for this video
I find the need for people to have their last conversation with a loved one to be deep and meaningful to be destined to fail in 99% of cases. Especially if it's meant to be a catharsis or a forgiveness. Saying you are sorry doesn't make up for decades of bad feelings, and talking about Cats doesn't invalidate a lifetime of love
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 pursuing a "last conversation" with someone before they leave us as something that rings profound and comprehensive always striked me as deeply misunderstanding of what makes relationships so meaningful. The absolute beauty that exists in just sharing the most trivial aspects of life, just fighting the existential dread of boredom together and finding joy in listening and commenting aimlessly on the most mundane shit ever. My last conversation with my father was about the ungodly amounts of piss that the dog he just adopted produced in a day. And I love thinking about that.
I don’t think it’s really about wanting the “last conversation” specifically to be profound. I believe it starts with “I wish I had worked up the courage to talk about that with them ever”, and then sometimes you imagine the fantasy of having done that the last chance you got. At least that’s how it was for me and my grandfather.
Because when you listen to him explain how he'll be running 30 hours a day in a two centuries, your mind goes: Hold on. He can't do that. And then your mind processes *why* he can't do that. It's a really clever way to bring the essay full circle.
It probably had that effect on you because it kinda describes life, the hope and want to keep going and the fear and reality of it ending. These are things that resonate with all humans and Joel put all that pretty nicely in that running allegory.
My father died of a heart attack when he was 39 and I was 13. I'm now older than my father was. It's only been a year since I "cought up" to his age and I'm trying to figure out how to handle that, but I uncontrolably and cathartically cried through most of this video and I thank you for that.
I'm not sure if I can watch this video. My grandpa died at like 63 of heart issues and my dad is currently in his mid 50s. My co-workers/friends father passed from heart failure just three days ago. He was 54. So this has been on my mind for a while.
A little over a month ago, I was diagnosed with a subtype of OCD I didn’t know existed called Existential OCD. I have intrusive thoughts about death, eternity, and existence on a daily basis that’s been heavily amplified by my mother’s death early this year. While I am going to therapy for it (as well as many other reasons) I know I will probably never find the answers I’m looking for. This video should have filled me with that same feeling of intense fear and it did a little but for whatever reason, I was comforted by it. Maybe it’s something about hearing those fears and postulations put to words that aren’t my own, I don’t know. This video means a lot to me, even though I don’t understand why, so although I know Joel probably won’t see this, I just wanted to say thank you.
If it can reassure you, a few years ago i had an existential crisis that lasted for a few months (and it looks like what you are describing, i didn't know that was a type of OCD either). I was constantly looking for answers that i knew i would never get. I was looking at stuff like the science of near-death experiences or spiritual psychedelic type nonsense even though i knew it was bullshit. You get over it ultimately. Life goes back to what it was before, you're not obsessed by these questions anymore. So keep being strong, keep focusing on the things you enjoy even though the "does it even matter ?" keeps popping into your head, keep going to therapy. Eventually it will fade away. Good luck, you got this !
hi there! sorry i'm replying to a two week old comment, but yours really hit home with me. i've had the same thing happen to me since summer 2021 after the death of a family member. i'll despair and obsess for anywhere from a week to a month and a half about death, eternity, afterlife/lack thereof. but life always goes on, and i end up passing through it. last july i had an episode where it got so bad i obsessed/worried/despaired off 15 pounds. but life went on and i'm doing better than i was. i still struggle with my fear of the uncertainty around death to the point that i honestly can't bring myself to watch this video yet, but i still can't help but be drawn to it in a way? but i know one day i'll be able to bring myself to do it. sorry to ramble, what i'm trying to say is that just like life, the despair will pass. there will always be hope and life will go on. i'm happy to hear that you've made progress, and it gives me hope that i'll be able to make some too ╰(*´︶`*)╯
I know what you mean. Every day I'm reading about consciousness, physics, etc. I feel like it all goes in a loop. I keep running back to the same ideas. I think I latched on to it as a way of not thinking about politics and communism or whatever during the pandemic. I wish I could get over it.
So this is a weird one but I can't not comment it. I lost my father to suicide, and as it happens his favourite artist, always, was Don McLean, and he especially liked to sing and play two of his song, "Crossroads", and of course "Vincent". He lived with that song for over forty years, and then he died. I still have his guitar, and I play it frequently, jndeed it's now my main guitar. I do indeed think that seeing Van Gogh mainly through the frame of his death isn't an accurate reflection on the artist. And yet, how could you not? It's impossible to look at any of his paintings and truly forget how he died. It's impossible for me to see a picture of my father and forget. But sometimes when I play his guitar I can forget, can remember that there were other songs and other moods, and that real life isn't a story like that and doesn't all just lead to the end. Some of it is simply beautiful.
I know I'm just another in a few hundred heavy comments, but this video came at a moment in my life were I truly am scared of where I am, what I might be, and where I'm going. Knowing that I'm not the only one trying to make sense of a world that means nothing and owes me nothing is comforting, in a way. You're not alone. I'm not alone. We're all experiencing our lives together.
Connectedness - knowing that there are others experiencing the same pain and struggles we are- is an essential piece of self compassion (along with mindfulness and self kindness) and so important for mental health ❤
i'm sorry for your loss. i can't imagine how difficult it must be to lose a parent at all, let alone so young. i hope you're doing alright and that you have a supportive community around you.
Lost my dad unexpectedly Nov 2020, I'm in my 20's I couldn't imagine going through that at your age - I'm so sorry. The weird feeling that other people (friends or perhaps family) seem to just forget or move on is seemingly common, and you shouldn't feel alien if that's what you've experienced. I remember having an unsettling feeling that I was like "why are people acting like things are just normal" and being on the spectrum this odd feeling felt compounded. I found a bit of solace after talking to people who have lost a parent who described the same exact feeling. Didn't mean to make this about me, I found comfort in knowing I wasn't alone and just wanted to share the message. Wishing the best for you, be well.
I’ve had two people in my life who passed away recently. One suddenly and quite young, the other one we’ve been preparing for a couple of months beforehand. Both of these have affected me in different ways but most of all, I’ve been forced to think about my recent, increasing fear of death. I’ve come out as trans a couple of years ago and for the first time I’ve been able to see a future for myself in which I grow old with people I love. I don’t want to die, I’ve only just started loving life truly.
I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for your loss. And that is comment made me cry a little. I feel very similarly to you. I’ve only just started medically transitioning. I’ve been suicidal most of my life and I finally don’t have those thoughts 70% of the time. I’m afraid of being killed when I leave my home and I want to live so badly. I’ve lived wanting to die and I finally don’t want that, and it’s the scariest time to be trans in America. (Thank you for sharing btw and I hope you and your family can heal together)
Thank you for sharing, and I'm sorry for your losses, I hope you find peace and acceptance. Your comment is very thought-provoking for me. I'm cis but I do my best to listen to the stories of trans people so I can better support them, and the idea of getting a "second" life or "new" life after transition is one that I've been aware of before, but never really thought too deeply about. The idea that it can give someone hope for the future and a reason to live, while also recontextualizing a fear of mortality, is a bit profound I think. Thank you for offering your perspective :)
I feel very similarly. I was catatonically depressed and obsessively suicidal from the age of 11ish to when I came out, at 16. I’m about to turn 25. When it first hit me, shortly after I started T at 18, that I was scared of dying, I was overjoyed. Now whenever I re-realize it, there’s still joy there, but more fear-I’ve been through more and I see death as a real possibility now as opposed to an abstract. It’s terrifying. I’m not religious but I beg God to let me live when I get really stuck in the fear. I still remember having no fear of death at all, actively lusting after it and seeking it out. It’s so strange.
This video felt so intimate and lovely. I guess we are all running to our deaths some faster than others but at least we aren't alone in this. I've thought about death a lot and now I try not too because it's something you can't avoid and no amount of thinking has allowed me to control it as some kind of deathly savant jean grey. I'm sorry about your father.
I'm 41 years old. My mother died in a fire two years ago. She was exactly 60. I found myself relating to this video on so many levels that it's difficult for me to articulate it. Thank you for making it.
I saw Carousel recently and my interpretation was that it was a dark subversion of that sort of broadway musical. The Hungarian play it’s based on is a bleak metaphor for the impossible conditions of the working class. What I got from Carousel however was that it was about the impulsive cycle of self destructive behavior that goes round and round. In a way, it’s brilliant
I'm glad you're discussing this. As a hospice nurse I find that not enough people in America discuss death and when people are confronted with their loved one's death they don't have the capacity to make it out of the denial stage until it's too late. Funnily enough my patients who are dying actually tend to accept their own mortality a lot easier than their family members do and often welcome it. If anyone wants a good book to read I highly recommend Being Mortal by Dr. Atul Gawande, I think it should be required reading in school.
I think death is one of those things that is infinitely abstract until it's right in front of us. People don't generally get to experience it and keep living so we don't really have stories to share about the feeling of it and I think humans are actually kind of bad at imagining physical experiences as concepts especially since very few of us have any clue what our death will be like. Finality is scary, but also I think there is something valuable about appreciating life as a one time deal so we live in a way where we focus on enjoying it and being happy instead of spending all our time trying to avoid death or fearing it. Bit of a tangent there but anyways I'm glad people like you exist. Death will come for us all and we deserve to be comfortable and have caring people around us when our times come. Thanks for what you do.
@@iamjustkiwi I agree that people shouldn't fixate on avoiding or fearing death, but I think just having a few times throughout life where you truly contemplate mortality will make healthier people. The families who have all accepted that one of my patients is dying are genuinely some of the best people I've ever known. The ones who hey stuck in the denial loop often aren't able to see outside of their own perspective
My mother died about ten years ago. She too was about 60 years old when cancer took her. She died a somewhat bitter woman. Complaining about non-issues until the last time I saw her. I fear that this may happen to me. Being too obsessed with what I deem is wrong with the world to see what was good in my life.
this one hit particularly hard. the other day i was on my way to see my sister and i was freezing cold until i got on the train and thought "why is it that when i'm cold i feel like i will never be warm again?" like obviously on an intellectual level i understand that isn't the case but on some instinctive level it's how i feel. my father is terminally ill. i have been through my own struggle with a potentially deadly disease in the time since his diagnosis. and in what seems like another lifetime at this point, i lived for several years in bucharest, a time and place i miss dearly but can never get back. anyway, thanks for the video.
"I would like to show my father he was wrong, though even if he was alive I never could." I love this line. It illustrates how self-righteous and closed-minded human beings can be (myself included). In some cases, about some beliefs or perspectives, someone changing our minds is as unlikely as someone changing our mind across worlds, after we've died. After all, even while alive, we do inhabit different worlds in some regards.
Oh wow, I read this differently, as a kind of situation where one feels they can't actually tell another person, especially their father, that they are wrong. Like how I may fantasize about debating religion with a Jehova Witness, but would never actually do that when one is in front of me.
I'm afraid I can't watch this upload, even though I don't think I've ever missed an upload by you. As a person with existential OCD, my fear of death can be actually severely, life-ruiningly debilitating if I get triggered too badly. Even just seeing this title and thumbnail in my feed gave me a punch to the throat that hasn't gone away yet. But I support everyone in the comments section who are all feeling their feelings. This is one subject absolutely everyone can relate to no matter where you're from. I guess there's some beauty in that but tbh death just sucks no matter what.
i recommend you reading about non-dualism, i read specifically Leo Hartong's Awekening to the dream, i let go of my ego identity and maybe that can help to calm your thoughts.
I think about death and feel the same way you do. Sometimes, I hyperventilate and panic about it. I also see the morbid humor in reminding myself and you that we will one day be dead and all our memories and experiences will evaporate into meaningless whispers in the halls of history.
I have OCD as well and death was such a scary thing to me that I straight up denied that I would die for the first many years of my life and I still do that today. I feel your pain man.
During the start of Covid, a time defined by death, my mother died. 2 months later, my uncle died. Another 2 months and my cat was dead. Once I was done fearing that I was cursed and everyone around me would die, I began to think of my own death for the first time in my 15 year old life. I was terrified of death, but I also dreaded living. I don’t know which one was worse. Now that I enjoy life again, I think of death less. But I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t scare me still. I hope when I’m old I can make peace with it, and until then I just hope I survive past my mom, who died at 43. I’ve come to define an ideology that takes over my brain some times, I call it momentalism. It’s the idea that everything you’ve ever been is in the present. I only exsist right now, in this moment. I know, some I’m 15 and this is deep shit, but hear me out. I begin to worry, if I’m sad right now what is the point of living if all I am is right now. I think the most important moment is the one right before death, I hope I am happy in mine but I know it will likely just be pain and confusion. When I’m happy, in that moment I don’t care about momentalism. I hope I stay happy a bit longer.
Weirdly chronic clinical depression can pretty much rob you of a fear of death, or of fear at all really. You know you've hit a true rock bottom when you don't fear death nor do you crave it. You just think "oh I guess that will happen, nothing I can do about it so why bother." Real death is complete and total apathy.
I'm hoping I can help make the idea of "momentalism" into something less negative for you. I think it might be good to try and extend momentalism a bit more. What about the moment in the future, right before you die, makes it more important than the moment you're reading this right now? Or when you were petting your cat, or when you will be graduating high school, or when you find yourself staring at a ceiling trying to sleep? Philosophically, I think in a pretty similar way, and the philosophy of "momentalism" seems very similar to Buddhist philosophies on non-essentialism. Imagine if every time you slept, you died, and an identical person in every way replaced you, except a little older and a little better rested. How would this knowledge change your life? Would you be afraid to sleep, knowing that you'd lose whatever you believe "you" to be? The belief is a bit more extreme than that. It's that "you" don't exist at all. That in a way, you might as well die and be replaced every single moment. Understanding this philosophy has helped me dread the future a bit less, and think less about my last years that I'll live and more about the moment I'm in right now. There's some unfathomable amount of fleeting moments that'll never return that I'm going to live. Every single time a moment passes, I'll never be there again, and in a way, it's not like it was *me* who was there. So, I ought to prepare good moments for the ones that'll control this body after me. I hope this is helpful to you, and I hope you can enjoy your moments of happiness, and know that in your moments of pain that they will pass.
@@strayiggytvi don’t think i have depression, but i guess that’s me. i don’t fear death in the same way a terminally ill person doesn’t fear it. i am slowly rotting away, as is everyone, only i give myself 60 years instead of a couple months.
@@wren_. the likelihood of you getting wrecked by something far earlier than 60 is higher than you want to admit. unless you have a minimum of 700 million dollars. you are at the mercy of the desires of those who do, and they dont have a limit to what they're willing to force everyone else into. this is the cause of all modern war too.
In physics, someone who leaves Earth will age quicker than someone who stays on Earth, so when they return, the person who stayed on Earth will have experienced time differently than the person in space. Time (actully "timespace") exists, even if the concept is abstract and can't be captured in a bottle. You simply exist at a point on its curvature in the "now" and your past and future selves exist on a different point. Just as you exist in this very moment and can look back at your younger self and think "I wish I did X" or "I'm glad I did Y", your future self exists at a moment in time to look back at your current self and say the same thing. Treat your future self well. They deserve it the same way the people you know and care about do.
My father died of cancer when he was 34, and I 13. I am now 37. I have suffered from terrible death anxiety my whole life. Right now, even as I type this, I feel the chest tightness. The death gas. It's hard to know whether you need your mind or body checked. True inevitability is impossible to accept. The 2 deaths are always on my mind.
My dad got diagnosed with cancer 4 years ago. Lost his bladder last year. He was 47. My aunt died suddenly of COVID 2 gears ago. I was diagnosed with diabetes a year ago. I'm 27. Every little thing reminds me of the inevitable. I'm always thinking about it. Always making plans for danger to prolong life a little bit more. Every experience and decision is a transaction measured in time for me. It's not something I can help. I've struggled with death anxiety and panic attacks since before I could read, and it only got worse after graduation. I have developed coping mechanisms but it's never enough to make it go away. It's just a part if my life I've had to learn to deal with.
this is excellent. i’m at the point in my life, nearly 24, where i am starting to feel and see age for the first time. i am losing my hair, i’m winded going up stairs, i have new aches and injuries and wrinkles. i know i’m young, but for the first time, i don’t feel like i’ll be young forever. the bulletproof teenage energy is gone and i’ve settled into something slower. it’s a strange corner to turn, and now i’ve turned it i can see it’s all corners from here, round and round. thanks for this
This is a very thought provoking essay. I guess my personal experience on the topic is that maybe 5 or so years ago I was deeply, unshakably terrified of death. The idea of not existing anymore would put me in a really nasty mental spiral if I focused on it too much. In the time between then and now that feeling has changed; these days when I think about dying primarily I'm just sad that there will eventually come a time when I no longer get to see what comes next. The idea that my window into human history has a distinct, inevitable endpoint just makes me ache inside. I don't know if that's better or worse than being afraid, or if that's even something that could be measured in those terms. I guess my hope is that if I continue to knead on the idea in my head my feelings on it will keep evolving, and by the time I hit the end of the road I'll have made some kind of peace with it. Best case scenario though I'd love to become a spooky ghost after I die and spend the rest of time haunting people. I think that could be really cool for me.
When I was a teenager I talked with my grandma about death and fear of death and she said she wasn't afraid, while I was, terribly afraid. And I even got afraid of the idea that, like her, I might no longer be afraid. I know what you mean of the difference between panic and sadness, I still alternate between them. But at least I'm no longer afraid of not being afraid, so I guess that's something.
@spinozatheobvious626 I feel very similar to you except that the idea that someday I won't be afraid is rather soothing. I like to imagine that death is only so terrifying because we are genetically programmed to fear it. If you could turn that off death would just become a natural part of everything
@@spinozatheobvious626 for me its the other way around. Im a hypocondriac after a police raid in my house that left me profoundly traumatized. I am afraid of dying every single second ever since i was 15. Nothing is as soothing to me than to think that maybe someday i wont be afraid anymore
You’ve perfectly described the thoughts and spirals that i’ve been going through recently. Nice to know i’m not the only one with a brain that hates them
This video is so timely. Just 2 days ago I was crippled by the fear of oblivion. I came to two conclusions. 1. My fear of death is confirmation that I want to live. 2. My life should be spent with my loved ones, doing things I love. I don't want to waste my one chance at existence.
My father died a little over a year ago and I am still utterly devastated, devastated that our broken relationship can never be mended except in my own mind. This year has been a long walk in the freezing wind. Thanks Big Joel for unexpected solidarity
A beautifully short, yes succinct video. As there are thousands of films, books, and other media addressing this topic, the one that really hit home for me was a film named "Ikiru". To give a brief synopsis, a bureaucrat gets a terminal illness diagnosis and he attempts to find meaning in his life. The film obviously goes into various directions and offers a lot of different messages (it's a Kurosawa film after all) but mainly it taught me to always be present, always be mindful. There will be good days, there will be bad days. There are human beings that owned (what was essentially, to them) the world and we hardly remember any of their names, and the ones we do, are often because they were the most abhorrent. So I know for certain I will be long forgotten, but if I can make my little, insignificant space around me, and my 'tribe' have an easier time and a better time for having been around, then my life will have had some meaning. I do not fear death, but I do fear becoming bitter and angry at the world and those around me.
It was eerie to hear you describe the sensation of phantom heart issues. Since my cousin passed recently, I've been experiencing the same; "it's probably just gas I can't expel, but what if it's a heart attack" and all. My cousin didn't even have a heart attack, it was a series of complications from a heart-related infection. We still don't fully know, the doctors could only guess after keeping her for months. But I got the sense talking to her in her hospital bed, that it really was, ultimately, caused by a broken heart. A resignation. And that has haunted me more than any other death I have experienced. And so comes my subsequent, urgent need to be remembered. For something. Anything. So that I can exist outside time, instead of vanishing inside it. That need creates a tightness in my chest.
I couldn't help but think of two Vonnegut quotes that get me through the day: "We are put on this earth to fart around, and dont let anyone tell you otherwise" and, said and written when he was in his twilight years, "if I ever die, God forbid…" I have terrible death anxiety, but those two sayings help.
Wow this video came out of nowhere, I just clicked it randomly on my home page and suddenly I’m confronted by one of the best video essays / stories I’ve had the pleasure of hearing. The opening story about running because of your health, almost running away from death itself, really hit me. I’m doing a similar thing and I can relate to the feeling
This is a rare video that made me sit quietly with my thoughts and my emotions and my cup of tea for a while instead of jumping to the next video to keep my mind reeling and occupied and distracted; it made me consider myself and my loved ones and my understanding (or lack thereof) of life and death and why I do things and why I want to do things. Thank you for this.
i love this comment section. i’ve been terrified of death (the deaths of the people i love, but even more of my own) for as long as i can remember, but i’ve never really heard anyone else talk about it. it’s nice to know other people think about it too, it’s nice to know that i’m not the only one who’s afraid.
Frankly one of the worst things about fear of death is that there is hardly a situation considered appropriate for talking about such a topic. So we all end up feeling alone
I've been having a weird year of grappling with mortality and whatnot. Several deaths in my family and friend group, which has led me to developing a panic disorder, mostly in the times when I'm zoning out in a stationary task: washing my hair, folding my clothes, running on a treadmill. I can't explain enough how kind it is to have this video essentially vocalize my panic attack - not as the panic itself, but detached enough to explain how I'm feeling more broadly. Hope that made some kind of sense. I really appreciate this upload. I'm sorry for your loss, I hope your father's memory will be a blessing and a guidance.
I don’t know how to word this correctly but the first few minutes already had me in tears. You have such a good way of simplifying complex topics without treating the “audience” like children, it’s incredibly refreshing and inspirational. Thank you.
As a runner who started just like you - you won’t stop at 20 minutes. You will keep going. Your film was great. Thank you for sharing your truth with us, and never bullshitting or condescending to us. Reminds me of Murakami’s book on running.
My father recently died of an accident. He fell of the roof. We never got along well. And the main thing that defined our relationship were all the things left unsaid so we could co-exist. I had little contact with him in the past 2 years. Despite seeing him almost every week my life before. Sometimes I do wonder what life would have become if he had lived. But then I realize that it wouldn’t have changed anything. We would never have talked. He would never have moved on from his resentments. He would never have made healthier desicions And it breaks me. The fact that the version in which he died a sudden death is propably the most peacful is a tragedy that will haunt me until I'll join him in oblivion
I really love the pacing of this video. The way it jumps from topic to topic that are tangentially related to one bigger picture is how I talk to myself when I'm cleaning at home or on walks by myself. It feels like someone just sorting their thoughts as they work through them.
I read the bell jar when I was 16, and in a pretty rough mental state, and at the time I held a lot of scorn for the inevitably of Esther’s death and Plath as well. This video, even paralleling my experience seeing some of van gough’s paintings in person 2 years ago, resonates so much with me. Thank you for having the courage to be so honest, it’s unexplainable how meaningful it is to me to hear someone go through such similar reflections and to feel understood in that way. ❤
This rather timely for me. As it's bound to always be for someone. A best friend of mine since high school killed himself last week. All quite unexpected. He had plans ahead and all, there was no discussion, no notes, nothing. But he set himself up at his work and hung himself there quite mythologically. The suggestion that it wasn't all futile, that the rest of his life didn't therefore become undone and pointless, is a little difficult to combat in practice. I like the sentiment though, and this was a good reminder.
That’s such a recent loss, I hope you’re surrounded by love & support during this time of grief. I think it’s normal & fair to grieve the fact that things your friend may have worked towards will never “pay off”, mourning aspirations he’ll never achieve. I know it’s not enough, it can never be enough, but I find some small comfort in coping by letting what my lost loved ones have meant to me change the way I move in the world. If your friend’s love changed your life, and you carry that love with you, it can be a little easier to fight back the thoughts that their life is now meaningless in death. Please be safe and take care.
At 3:24 your line of narration ends with "...how quickly we can blot out the past," and you turn back and point. It's like the image of you, the proverbial Past, turned to the viewer in a lighthearted confrontation. And that's just classic Big Joel tight comedy right there and that's the reason I always come back to your videos. Above the rest you just got taste. Your videos exude style and personality. I also love that the black border over this footage acts as both a way for the animation to stand out, and as a way to distance the viewer before involving the viewer directly.
I think about death every day. During my low moments, a phrase repeats in my head- "I wish I was dead." It gives me a strange, apathetic kind of comfort. I'm not sure why.
My mom and dad passed away in the last two years very close together, both of cancer and other complications on top. It's been very hard, I'm only 22 and not very stable so life without them is a confusing scary mess. My mom passed from a ruptured bowel due to the chemotherapy, which she slowly dehydrated from, on top of the hellish nightmare eating food was for her during that. Many factors played into that, but shortly after learning those details, I hospitalized myself for my mental health's sake, and spent most of the time there in agony unable to eat or drink a thing, which made me sicker and sicker. Nothing they tested me with showed anything, and I'm certain it was psychological given every night spent in that hospital I was haunted imagining how miserable my poor 65lb mother felt before she died. My father passed away a little bit before at the start of 2022, and he had gone into hospice for terminal cancer and lyme disease which caused him to go septic. His death has been just as traumatic if not more in other ways, and one thing I'm constantly feeling about him, is a desire for his last dream to happen. I just want his death and life to have lead to something exactly like what he wanted wanted it to, but things just aren't working out the more we try to postpone. I know he had many pipe dreams, but I really believed in the final fight he put up for what he wanted this time. Knowing I have to move on and follow my own path at this point, and let his end is the hardest thing for me, and I just wish I knew whether that desire is more for my own relief or pure love for my father. Irdk.
I already watched on nebula and love this deeply personal video. I related a Lot. I lost my dad 2 years ago, and he had a long heart failure decline. I’ve spent a lot of the past two years going through the same thoughts of what my dad thought about things. Thank you
i love this video. being for most of life surrounded by suicidal or terminally ill people and having been suicidal a lot too, i always end up writing and thinking about death. it's my favorite topic to make art about. i love what you said about it here
I realized that I was going to die someday when I was twelve years old. It was late at night and I was alone at home, and I had a panic attack because of it. I had another existential crisis later in my teens and couldn't sleep until i was completely exhausted. I had tried to open up about the sheer terror i was experiencing but i either got brushed off or ignored. I still occasionally get scared, but i try to find a comfort in that nothing lasts forever. It's a sad thing, but I think it's also beautiful in that aspect. Nothing should go on and on. It makes what time we have all the more precious.
I'm from Romania and tbh I always hated being born here I felt ostracized my whole life Your videos are comforting to listen to Also I've always wanted to be a runner, your stuff is inspiring. Thank you so much for the video. I am so grateful for your existence
A lot of romanians I've met have felt that way, not quite fitting in, a country with no hope, somewhat isolated from the rest of the world. Someone I really loved was there for some time, and often its hard to not to think about her when I think of the country, and I remember how we were very close over that same kind of isolation and never fitting in. You never see the way things end, and how people are affected by what life throws at them till its too late sometimes.
We arrived in Bucharest last week, spending a month here. When I told the immigration officer we are here for a vacation, he gave me gave me such a "wtf would you come here for" look.
@@henryfisher9948as a romanian, the best way to describe my country, its citizens and its situation is "hopeless". the past, the present and the future hold nothing good. im a nature enjoyer, and i love going on hikes, or in the woods, or wherever i can. the overwhelming beauty of this land contrasts so much with the helplessness of this shithole. i just turned 18 and i have no idea what party to vote because i know all of them will steal from us and abuse us
Same, this country has nothing but depression and misery for those not content with it. It's a wasteland devoid of art, hope and willpower. You should become a runner and run away from here as fast as you can, because it's going to get much worse in the future. The betrayal of Soviet communism and the subsequent betrayal of the privatisation, followed by years of constant betrayal by the state and the populace themselves have turned this country into a graveyard of opportunities and an insult to life. There is no Romanian culture beyond the shared despair.
Holy crap, man. I am beyond words. I wish I had the - courage? ability? - the whatever-it-takes to string my thoughts about life together as beautifully as you have here. This feels so personal and raw. Thank you for sharing this.
I really enjoy the way you talk *around* the titular subject here, not even indirectly addressing it until the final lines. It’s interesting, that explicit invitation to listen to the words not being said.
Really honest and vulnerable video BJ, thanks for sharing. My dad died in 2020 but we were pretty estranged. He was very sick my whole life, with diabetes, kidney issues, shot liver, heart disease, horrible depression, possibly BPD, and a relationship with alcohol that dominated his mind from the age of 13 until his death in his late 60s, regardless of being sober for the final 27 years of his life. It was very strange to know this dying man was always in my life but he always managed to stay alive and seemingly devoted most of his later years to writing about sobriety. I'm 34 now and am starting to feel and see the effects of living a very lethargic life. I'm busy but not fit, somewhat successful but relaxed. I know I need to start taking care of my body and my heart, but find it difficult to care about my health much. Glad you found a rhythm.
My mum died suddenly of a heart attack at 60 and her dad in his 50’s and his dad before him too. At this point I’ve maybe accepted I won’t be here for a long time. My mum was ill for a long time with unrelated illness, we couldn’t do a lot together. Realistically even if her heart problem got caught, the same or worse could have happened anyway. I like to imagine another reality where we had a nice life together, with no big troubles. I couldn’t allow any kind of unrealistic though like that until recently. And it is the only thing that helps me get in touch with my grief.
I really like the way you ended this. The way it mirrors (and in so doing flips) the opening fears to something absurd and hopeful. It's beautiful. Thanks.
I recall learning about the musical 'Carousel,' adapted from Ferenc Molnár's play 'Liliom.' from my creative arts professor at university, Michael Ballam. Unlike the play, the musical introduced a more hopeful ending. Rodgers and Hammerstein, the creators, were initially unsure how Molnár would react to these changes, particularly since they significantly altered the ending without consulting or notifying the original author. Contrary to their concerns, when Molnár saw the play, he was actually very pleased with the adaptation. He especially admired the new ending, expressing his appreciation enthusiastically. This reaction was a relief to the creators who were actually nervous he would be angry.
I lost my mom when she was 51,back in 2015. Started dealing with panic attacks and fear of dying a couple of years later. there's something about losing a parent that makes you very aware of how fragile and short our own lives are. There's not much to say other than it gets better but it's always there like a shadow behind me.
Amazing video, Joel. What was really fascinating for me is that I have written and directed a play called "Chest Press" that my theater company has been doing for years now here in Madrid and this play explores the fear of death through the bridges between the Bible and the gym. There is one actor that runs in a treadmill for 25 minutes every night we do the show. It's funny (and sad, and compelling) that, despite us not knowing each other, we have similar concerns symbolised in similar ways.
I miss my dad and I miss arguing with him and telling him he's wrong about things too Mr. Joel. In January it will be 2 years since he departed. He was already 50 when I was born so in a strange way I'd been preparing for his death for my entire life. And even when it was slow and somewhat predictable it did not change or lessen the vast void that exists where he once was in my life.
I'm not sure why, but the sentiment you have about wanting to talk to your father again to disagree with him about a musical made me cry. I have 2 notable men that I never got to have a full, adult conversation with. One was my maternal grandfather, a fellow chemical engineer who died over a decade before my conception. The other, my maternal grandfather, who got dementia when I was probably around 8, and who's decline in appearance shocked me into not crying for years after I saw him when I was 13. I hadn't seen him since I was 5, when he imparted on me a love for coin collecting, something I maintain to this day. I've always wanted to talk to my maternal grandfather about his experience in Vietnam, something which left him physically and emotionally scarred. But I'm rethinking that. My aunt gave me a book that my paternal grandfather edited, leading me to learn he was an organic chemist. And I thought to myself that I would love to express to him that I hate organic chemistry, so we could lightheartedly spar about it. I think maybe that's the better urge, having seen how your similar statement about Carousel has impacted me. It's a mundane thing to want, but it's the backbone of how I connect to people. I think I understand why I cried now.
I lost my grandmother almost 2 years ago. It still weighs heavily on me today because all of her flaws aside, she was a very wonderful woman. I never cared about what her childhood was like or her relationship with history. I cared about watching movies with her, taking care of her cats together, picking apples in the fall, or even just talking about what we were up to at the time. Its harder to not care about her past now because that's all I've got. There's so much we'd talk about if she was still here, but I'm only now interested in her past because I know I won't ever get the chance to talk about the present with her anymore
This video essay destroyed me. I have a toy carousel I've had since I was a baby, a gaudy, hastily painted little music box with 40 years of wear. I remember the existential horror, before I had the vocabulary to name it, of listening to the at first cheerful tune gradually slow and abruptly stop, and thinking it was as subtle a metaphor for death as my mind could handle. I've wondered for 40 years where that song came from until 10 minutes and 45 seconds into this video when I realized it's the carousel from the movie carousel about a dead man coming to terms with the meaninglessness of his death. I thought about my lost grandparents and my uncle, who died before I can remember. I thought about the hours I've spent on a teadmill trying to be a better father for my children (or ar least for longer). I thought about the awkward intimacy of this para social relationship where you can reveal so much to me without ever knowing who I am. I broke down crying and shared this video with my dad, who I thank God is still alive.
I avoided watching this video because I knew it would make me sad. It did, but it also helped I think. So thank you for making it. I think it might be art.
I love this elevated collage format of Video Essay, less directly tied to thesis and instead focused on theme, feels like a step towards a more emotive landscape
As some who has been living with health anxiety since I was a kid, with no known genetic illnesses but still thinking that for some reason I am about to drop dead all of the sudden since I was 10, this video reaches me in a way I can't explain.
The simplicity of life and death is horrifying until you lose someone very close to you. Then it’s almost comforting. Thank you Joel. I lost my dad two years ago to cardiac arrest and I didn’t know I needed this.
This is one of my my favorite videos from an already incredible channel. It resonated with me in a way that's hard to explain off-the-cuff, like a really amazing poem. Thank you for making this and putting it out there.
I LITERALLY LOVE YOU SOOOOO MUCH your eloquence is god like. i truly cannot think of anyone else who can put together such a beautiful composition of thoughts.
This video touched my heart in a way that few of your videos do, I enjoy watching your essays but this spoke to me about things I worry about every day and struggle to find solace in. For that I want to give a genuine thanks, there's no guarantee this message will be seen but if it is let it be known I appreciate you for making this and your work in general.
I put off watching this video for awhile. Going through a hard time, didn't want to think about death. But it was exactly what I needed today. Moved to tears. Thanks Big Joel. Thank you for sharing. It helps in ways you can't imagine. 💜
I really wanted this video to be simple, without calls to action and without ads. I hope my patrons can understand, and it won't become a habit. If you like and want to support work like this, I'd of course appreciate any donation. I make cool monthly videos. patreon.com/bigjoel
I enjoyed this video. There is nothing to apologize for.
I was just thinking of you and now a video
Don’t apologize, I found this video to be a very nice change of pace
i really like it - quite the moody piece, leaves me with something to think about 💓
my dad died 20 days ago. I miss him so much. I didn't miss him at first, I guess because he was just here. This feels like my ten second treadmill run. There is probably a cap, But right now it feels like I will miss him 10% more every day that passes until the end of time.
I don't think he has anything he needs to redeem himself for or regret, and I know his life was full. He has such a wonderful soul and was my most trusted comrade and political confidant growing up. But because of this, he was the sole soul directly responsible for so much of the goodness of my life, he was so tied to how I went about my day, that every day without him feels worse than the last.
Thanks for all your hard work Joel, I enjoyed the vid :)
I recently read Van Goghs letters to his brother and in one he wrote, “Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”
oh wow i want to frame it above my bed actually
This really helped me with something I've been dealing with. Thank you.
van Gogh had such a beautiful mind. I read these letters years ago and was utterly impressed (and saddened)
Thank God for Theo's love and support of his brother, and Theo's widow Johanna for continuing his efforts to get the world to see Vincent's work.
it's so interesting that he seems resentful of the fact that he must have hope. as if despair is not the worst thing, but uncertainty is.
My mom was terrified of death and went to extremes to avoid it. She believed, "law of attraction" style, that people only die because they accepted it as inevitable. She wouldn't eat cooked food or keep a microwave in the house because carcinogens and radiation cause cancer. She died of a rare and aggressive cancer at 49, no chemo, and on the strictest vegan diet any dying person could subject themselves to. To this day I can't help but think of her as a ghost, floating around beating herself up for all the things she did to draw a premature death to herself. In my brain I'm constantly trying to pull her out of her obsessive life fixation, like "Mom, there's no do-over. When do you finally let it go and give yourself time to enjoy flying, or scaring people away from prime real estate, or appearing in your grandchildren's' dreams? You're such a young ghost, and you're wasting your afterlife."
This concept would make for a really good poem. Just saying
this is such a beautiful comment, i hope you’re doing well and i’m sorry about your mom
@@ghintz2156 It really would
This is a really beautiful comment.
that's very sad, sorry to hear about that
This was beautiful, well done
What did you enjoy about it?
poop
I love seeing creators, whose content I enjoy, enjoying them too 😊
Yoo, your content made me question and subsequently abandon a very toxic Christian faith. I love your recent video and am looking forward to the movie!
@@kentburns Thank god
My best friend ended her own life around 8 months ago. In a note she had told her parents to give to me, she said that she had been planning to end her life for around 1 month. My brain is so against the idea that the only thing that truly mattered in her life was how it ended, yet every conversation that mentions her is about that topic, or at the very least is tainted by it, forever. I appreciate your interpretation that Van Gogh's paintings were not all a journey to his suicide, but instead a part of a person who was much more than his method of death. Thank you for this video.
I'm so sorry for your loss. I can't imagine what you must be going through.
I had a great friend, a poet like me, and his writing was often dark in nature but he was a savant with words. When he killed himself, everyone would view his poetry through the lens of his suicide. Knowing the man while he was alive, that's not at all what he would have wanted. It's hard to lift that veil for others, and I understand why, but life is about the journey, not the destination. And I am getting a tattoo sometime next year of the lines from a poem me and him collaborated on so his memory as a writer can live on through the brilliance of his words when people ask about my tattoo or just read it without the context of his suicide. And that's the way I think he would want his writing to be appreciated. I say all that because finding a way of memorializing her that doesn't include that context might also be something that interests you. People are more than their endings. But it's up to the people left to talk about the middle parts of their life story.
@@NichrysalisThe same was often deduced about Francesca Woodman, readings of all of her work has sort of been somewhat debased because of that. Her ending her life had no impact on my interpretations of her photos because when I first saw her work I knew nothing of her personal life. I just saw these gorgeous photographs that seemed to appeal to some sensibility I couldn't quite describe.
The photos aren't sad, maybe sanguine, sensuous, dreamily abstruse but never inherently depressing. When the public learns of someone taking their own life, their art and actions seem to be subject to oversimplified revisionism or that any joy in their life that they expressed must have been them hiding something.
When in reality we are all hiding something, there is always something unsaid between two or more people, a malady that can't be expressed or made understood to others or oneself, a problem that at one minute seems to swallow you up only to be marginal a second later. The only difference is that someone that ends it all could've only been slightly more impulsive than another who didn't.
It's beautiful to hear that you are memorializing your friend in ink, I'm sure they would've liked that!
Sorry to hear that. I've lost 3 friends to suicide and it never gets easier. By that I mean it hurts just as bad with each one. The pain does slowly fade, but never completely. Just know you are not to blame in any way. As someone who's dealt with suicidal thoughts my whole life and even made attempts, I can tell you the dedication we have to dying when in that mindset is impossible to overcome from the outside. All you can do is be the best friend possible and be a light in the extreme darkness they're facing
I lost my dad to suicide about a year ago. Aside from the 'regular' grief of loss, now every highlight, every childhood memory, every thing that reminds me of the positives of him, comes distorted through the lens of knowing how the story ended. I try to reconnect, and I can value those moments like you can value the paintings of Van Gogh. But there's that fact of knowing how it ends that injects this undertone, that makes the pattern-seeking in our brains look for some kind of foreshadowing, even in the moments that didn't strike you as being a premonition for what was going to happen. I read his journals, and like with the Bell Jar, you read someone's lows and have in your mind this expectation, from books and movies and shows, that the low point only exists so that someone can come out of it. We're primed to feel like the lows only exist as setup for triumph. It's not supposed to end when the character is at their lowest. Sometimes it does.
Beautifully said and I’m so so sorry
Mine too a few years back, and yes I relate to what you say, it's so tempting to frame every memory now in terms of premonition but life is just all kinds of things that happen, not all of them connected to someone's death. Take care of yourself, I've found this grief to be the most complicated thing I've ever had to deal with.
Wonderful write-up and I’m sorry for your loss.
Wow your words were so profound and really struck my soul. I’m so sorry for your loss. I hope you are an author or in some capacity an artist because you have a gift for writing.
I'm sorry for your loss. Have you heard of the indie movie AFTERSUN? Your words reminded of me its story. I think it captures the feelings of nostalgia tinted grief perfectly and maybe it can help the process of grieving a parent.
This was truly a fantastic video. Can’t wait for what you make in 2024, the personal narrative here was really special.
look at him. praising his own video
@@AsexTwin Joel's have(r) each others back.
@@AsexTwin7\
@@renaigh ya wanna know something absolutely TERRIFYING? big joels real name isn't even joel. it's henry. absolutely horrifying.
This is really good, I'm glad you made this.
It was striking to me when you mentioned we almost always see Christ depicted as either a baby or a dying/dead man. We not only never see him come back to life but we never see him just living his life. As a secular person with cultural ties to Christianity who is searching for meaning in my own life I often wish that Christianity showed us more about how he lived.
That's all the Catholic church. The bible isn't as focused on that aspect as that sick organization would like you to believe. In fact they openly ignore the words he said and go against many of his ideals... idk what my point is here, just that religion is not the church and the church is definitely not religion.
There’s this one painting of Jesus, Menneskesønnen/The Son of Man by Christian Skredsvig, that felt like a kick to the gut the first time I saw it. It depicts Jesus in a 19th century Norwegian village. He looks just like everyone else, and he’s in the background and slightly off-center; the first figure you notice in the painting is not him, but a sick girl being carted in to be healed.
I’ve always struggled to fully explain what, exactly, I found so impactful about that painting. The explanation I’ve told myself is that it’s just an outstanding depiction of my own service-based Christian theology. But this video and this comment make me think it’s something more basic: it’s one of the few paintings that actually depicts the living Jesus Christ the way he would have been perceived by those around him.
I mean, have you read a bible?
I don’t want to be insensitive but you frankly, don’t know what your talking about.
Pretty much every story in the bible about Jesus is about his life. Not his death.
This comment blows my mind at it’s closed mindedness and poor perspective tbh
Read Lamb by Christopher Moore 😉
@@artlover282 "Depicted" as in depicted in paintings and sculptures, specifically visually.
Strange to get so worked up about the criticism when you clearly don't even understand what they were saying.
That bit about having watched the musical and wanting to talk to your father again so you can tell him why you hate it, very visceral to me. Damn. Thank you.
My dad is dead a few days ago. A furious prostate cancer. He never suffered and died with his family at home. Less than 20% die at home and many suffers from physical or mental pain and the fact that I'm in the medical field helped me alot. In my country health is "free" (collective systems are more efficient and cost less than private/individual healthcare systems) so we did not pay much. Also I can have a large part of my precedent salaries during unemployment due to politics precedent generation voted so I could stay at home and heal him for 2 years without working officially. I hope someday everybody in world will access to death with dignity and comfort even in poverty. Contrary to our swiss neighboor we didnt legalized euthanasia yet and I hope we will do it someday. For the moment, the maximum we can do is injecting morphine and midazolam even if the risk of death if very high but it is not the same. His death was less painful for him and for us (it was not brutal and he was 72), he hated being hospitalized. And I did not wanted to see my father dying in loneliness like many elders do unfortunately
I'm sorry for your loss.
Thank you @@PhotonBeast
Sorry for your loss. My mom died this summer of breast cancer, which she fought for almost ten years. She worked until she knew she stopped treatment, and we're only comfortable because of the life insurance check.
Thank you for sharing this. I'm glad that your father had a loving family.
Sorry to hear this. Have lost healthy family members to this.
my coworker died in an accident two weeks ago at age 20. i’ve recently been afraid of how quickly everything can change, how one small thing can change everything hugely, for better or for worse. i’m also very young, and the idea of death is still really not something i’m comfortable with, and i’m sure my coworker wasn’t comfortable with it either, she didn’t get the chance to even think about it before it happened. her funeral is next week, and all my other coworkers are working as normal, and i’m scared to go back to work and see people pretending it didn’t even happen, that someone who was alive is not alive anymore. i’m scared to go to the funeral and talk to my other coworkers about banal things, and hear people talk about how she was a great and talented person, instead of screaming about how fucking unfair it is that she died at age 20, and here we all are, still living and experiencing things. i’m tired of pretending that death doesn’t just fucking suck. i’m an english student, and i enjoy finding meaning in things and in life. but i cant find meaning in this.
The funeral has probably passed at this point. But I just wanted to say that I hope you find a way out of feeling this pressure to pretend that her death or death in general doesn't fucking suck. You don't need to pretend that. Your coworkers or your boss may expect you to pretend but you don't have to fulfill their expectations.
When people act this unbothered after a death it is usually because they lack the strength or the ability to think these thoughts that you are thinking right now. It can be overwhelming to deal with these thoughts and some people react to that by blocking them out. It's a way of surviving, but it makes for a situation that is unjust to you. You don't deserve to feel like your grief is forbidden. Your feelings are understandable and justified.
I'm sorry for your loss.
@@hektorsehmsdorf1336thank you, that means a lot
i feel and felt the same way when my younger cousin died last year. It made me so mad and scared, and I am so mad and scared. the fuck am i supposed to do with these feelings though.
i think the worst or maybe best part is that life goes on for others. my cat will still need fed tomorrow, my car will need gas. i hate it but it's true and it kind of helps dull the pain. until you remember it again.
sorry that's not very helpful. i just wanted to say i know how you feel and it kind of gets better
I don't know if it's my place to pontificate on why or whether death is okay, but I'm only a few years older than you and I've come to mostly find peace. That world that you were born into and found so much to love in before you ever knew of death, had formed through the tragedy of countless trillions of deaths, counting non-humans. Now that you've seen the irreconcilable injustice of someone who passed away before their time, has it really changed anything? Of course it's wrong, but how could life exist without wrong? Can you even imagine a world made up completely of "right" things? I can't. I know this might not end up resonating for you in the way it does for me, but all I can say is that I owe so much of my peace to the Dao De Jing of Lao Tzu. It's the truest philosophy I've found.
I lost a friend in 2018, my cousin in 2020, and my uncle in 2023, all of them unexpectedly and all young. I worked in the same place as my uncle and found myself bewildered and wanting to scream out in the middle of the store "how can you people just continue on like the world hasn't changed?? Why do my family and friends keep dying??" I too have fears about the sudden nature of loss and death. How it can happen at anytime, to anyone, for no reason. The cruelty of randomness.
I remind myself that I have also been the ignorant person not knowing that someone's life was falling apart. We have been the ignorant people living our lives as genocides happen elsewhere. I have no words of comfort for you, but you're not alone in these feelings.
What makes me a fan of Carousel is the song "If I Loved You", which is my favorite showtune by a long, long mile. It's one of the most beautiful songs in the world to me. The futility is the point. They predict their whole romance with that gut wrenching song - they're never able to tell each other I love you. They knew from their first meeting they wouldn't be able to express their feelings, and how detrimental that would be, and yet they went ahead and followed the script anyway. Just like Billy, who knows meeting his daughter that this is his one chance to do better, knows what the wrong choice is, and still can't bring himself to succeed.
I do think abusers can change, and maybe even redeem themselves, but it takes years if not decades of work. Maybe Billy could have changed, could have done better, but a day wasn't enough time. He could have told his wife he loved her, he knew he felt that way, knew he should have done it, but he didnt until it was too late.
One of the bleakest part of human experience for me is knowing what you're about to do is wrong, and just not being able to hit the stop button. Knowing full well you're being cowardly or cruel and knowing before you even act that you'll regret it. I haven't seen another piece of media really tackle that experience. Carousel is strange and gross and sad. It's always really hit me
"One of the bleakest part of human experience for me is knowing what you're about to do is wrong, and just not being able to hit the stop button" . I'm not sure why but that really hit me. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
I often think of how different I could be, how my entire personality could theoretically change in the blink of an eye, how much better or worse I could be all of a sudden. And yet, I stay the same, and I often think of what motivates these decisions we don't even take on how to act, even when we're thinking about them.
My mom died in front of me, after the better part of a decade fighting cancer. I am not afraid of death, I have no hopes or believes about it and I don't want to be dead - but am not afraid of it. I am afraid of dying, though I'm afraid of the process, I've seen how gruesome and unbearable it can be and I am terrified of it.
I was just thinking about how far removed the fear of dying is from the fear of death. I'm not afraid of death at all, but as someone with a cancer predisposition, I've gone to what some would call extraordinary lengths to have a tiny bit of (maybe illusory) control over what doesn't kill me.
think of what joel said about walking inside from the cold, but many times more. take care
I don't think I've ever thought of separating dying from death. I don't think I'm scared of death itself as long as I am remembered after, the idea of one not dying until they're forgotten and all that. But the idea of dying truly does haunt me more than me becoming dead, the pain, fear and surprise at suddenly having limited time that results in death really does seem scarier than the state of being a corpse, to me that is.
My mom died of Hodgkin's and my friend died of old age.
@@eatatjoes6751 There's no such thing as dying of old age, it's just a roundabout way of saying the exact cause of death is unknown.
this truly felt like a genre of essay that I havent seen as much in video form. i think it was beautiful, and touching, and tragic in a way that feels so banal. thanks
Solar Sands has a few videos similar to this, they're great
I reccomend the thoughts from places series on the vlogbrothers channel as well
Yeah this was really great
Yo, I got you man, I got a playlist with this genre! 11 videos so far and I'm slowly collecting more. I call it "Phobia Playlist" on my channel. My fav video out of the bunch is Fear of Cold by Jacob Geller. I watched it 3 times by now. There's something I find very appealing when someone makes a video essay about a fear. Like a previous comment said about Solar Sands, I got his video called "Thalassophobia" in that playlist.
you might like the folding ideas video "I can't stop watching contagion".
I also lost my dad, almost 3 years ago to a drug overdose. I was the one who found his body because I went to deliver his Christmas present on Dec. 26th, worried that I didn't hear from him on Christmas day. He lived in a housing complex for addicts and people just off the street. It was a pretty miserable place to live, essentially one tiny bedroom for each person and all their things including a fridge for food. They experience deaths there quite often as you might imagine. It's abysmal, and just another reason why my city should be ashamed of itself. Idk what else to say.
what is your favorite memory of him
@@captain531 I don't think I can answer that right now
i’m really sorry for your loss
I'm so sorry for your loss
I'm sorry you had that experience, and I am sorry society failed your dad.
Man. The wanting a Carousel conversation rings so true. The last conversation I had with my grandfather was me telling him about seeing the movie Cats. He didn’t have a very expressive face, but he seemed… puzzled, in a fun way. Sometimes I think about the fact that our last conversation was on something so stupid, but there’s also beauty and humanity in that. Thank you for this video
I find the need for people to have their last conversation with a loved one to be deep and meaningful to be destined to fail in 99% of cases. Especially if it's meant to be a catharsis or a forgiveness. Saying you are sorry doesn't make up for decades of bad feelings, and talking about Cats doesn't invalidate a lifetime of love
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 pursuing a "last conversation" with someone before they leave us as something that rings profound and comprehensive always striked me as deeply misunderstanding of what makes relationships so meaningful. The absolute beauty that exists in just sharing the most trivial aspects of life, just fighting the existential dread of boredom together and finding joy in listening and commenting aimlessly on the most mundane shit ever. My last conversation with my father was about the ungodly amounts of piss that the dog he just adopted produced in a day. And I love thinking about that.
I don’t think it’s really about wanting the “last conversation” specifically to be profound. I believe it starts with “I wish I had worked up the courage to talk about that with them ever”, and then sometimes you imagine the fantasy of having done that the last chance you got. At least that’s how it was for me and my grandfather.
I don’t know why, But Joel hauntingly describing his running schedule at the end really hit me for some reason.
And this short kaleidoscope of clips and photos.
It reminded me a lot of the end of one of my favorite films, It’s Such A Beautiful Day, by Don Hertzfeldt.
This whole video did, really.
Because when you listen to him explain how he'll be running 30 hours a day in a two centuries, your mind goes: Hold on. He can't do that.
And then your mind processes *why* he can't do that. It's a really clever way to bring the essay full circle.
It probably had that effect on you because it kinda describes life, the hope and want to keep going and the fear and reality of it ending. These are things that resonate with all humans and Joel put all that pretty nicely in that running allegory.
@@diegomo1413glad I’m not the only one who drew that connection lol
My father died of a heart attack when he was 39 and I was 13. I'm now older than my father was. It's only been a year since I "cought up" to his age and I'm trying to figure out how to handle that, but I uncontrolably and cathartically cried through most of this video and I thank you for that.
My brother passed at 28 when I was 23. When I turned 29 it was a weird feeling to sit with. Doesn’t really make sense.
I'm not sure if I can watch this video. My grandpa died at like 63 of heart issues and my dad is currently in his mid 50s. My co-workers/friends father passed from heart failure just three days ago. He was 54. So this has been on my mind for a while.
A little over a month ago, I was diagnosed with a subtype of OCD I didn’t know existed called Existential OCD. I have intrusive thoughts about death, eternity, and existence on a daily basis that’s been heavily amplified by my mother’s death early this year. While I am going to therapy for it (as well as many other reasons) I know I will probably never find the answers I’m looking for. This video should have filled me with that same feeling of intense fear and it did a little but for whatever reason, I was comforted by it. Maybe it’s something about hearing those fears and postulations put to words that aren’t my own, I don’t know. This video means a lot to me, even though I don’t understand why, so although I know Joel probably won’t see this, I just wanted to say thank you.
If it can reassure you, a few years ago i had an existential crisis that lasted for a few months (and it looks like what you are describing, i didn't know that was a type of OCD either). I was constantly looking for answers that i knew i would never get. I was looking at stuff like the science of near-death experiences or spiritual psychedelic type nonsense even though i knew it was bullshit. You get over it ultimately. Life goes back to what it was before, you're not obsessed by these questions anymore. So keep being strong, keep focusing on the things you enjoy even though the "does it even matter ?" keeps popping into your head, keep going to therapy. Eventually it will fade away. Good luck, you got this !
as someone also with OCD, and specifically having had struggles with this same subset of ocd, i see you and hope for the best
OMG that is what I have to
hi there! sorry i'm replying to a two week old comment, but yours really hit home with me. i've had the same thing happen to me since summer 2021 after the death of a family member. i'll despair and obsess for anywhere from a week to a month and a half about death, eternity, afterlife/lack thereof. but life always goes on, and i end up passing through it. last july i had an episode where it got so bad i obsessed/worried/despaired off 15 pounds. but life went on and i'm doing better than i was. i still struggle with my fear of the uncertainty around death to the point that i honestly can't bring myself to watch this video yet, but i still can't help but be drawn to it in a way? but i know one day i'll be able to bring myself to do it. sorry to ramble, what i'm trying to say is that just like life, the despair will pass. there will always be hope and life will go on. i'm happy to hear that you've made progress, and it gives me hope that i'll be able to make some too ╰(*´︶`*)╯
I know what you mean. Every day I'm reading about consciousness, physics, etc. I feel like it all goes in a loop. I keep running back to the same ideas. I think I latched on to it as a way of not thinking about politics and communism or whatever during the pandemic. I wish I could get over it.
So this is a weird one but I can't not comment it. I lost my father to suicide, and as it happens his favourite artist, always, was Don McLean, and he especially liked to sing and play two of his song, "Crossroads", and of course "Vincent". He lived with that song for over forty years, and then he died. I still have his guitar, and I play it frequently, jndeed it's now my main guitar. I do indeed think that seeing Van Gogh mainly through the frame of his death isn't an accurate reflection on the artist. And yet, how could you not? It's impossible to look at any of his paintings and truly forget how he died. It's impossible for me to see a picture of my father and forget. But sometimes when I play his guitar I can forget, can remember that there were other songs and other moods, and that real life isn't a story like that and doesn't all just lead to the end. Some of it is simply beautiful.
♥️♥️
I know I'm just another in a few hundred heavy comments, but this video came at a moment in my life were I truly am scared of where I am, what I might be, and where I'm going. Knowing that I'm not the only one trying to make sense of a world that means nothing and owes me nothing is comforting, in a way. You're not alone. I'm not alone. We're all experiencing our lives together.
❤❤❤❤
Connectedness - knowing that there are others experiencing the same pain and struggles we are- is an essential piece of self compassion (along with mindfulness and self kindness) and so important for mental health ❤
we are all ONE
We are all in this crazy world together, trying to make sense of it.
Thanks.
I'm 15 now, and I lost my dad in the height of 2020. This was one of the most beautiful videos I have watched. Thank you for sharing this.
I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope things are going as well for you as they can be. I hope you had happy years with your dad while he was here.
i'm sorry for your loss. i can't imagine how difficult it must be to lose a parent at all, let alone so young. i hope you're doing alright and that you have a supportive community around you.
Lost my dad unexpectedly Nov 2020, I'm in my 20's I couldn't imagine going through that at your age - I'm so sorry. The weird feeling that other people (friends or perhaps family) seem to just forget or move on is seemingly common, and you shouldn't feel alien if that's what you've experienced. I remember having an unsettling feeling that I was like "why are people acting like things are just normal" and being on the spectrum this odd feeling felt compounded. I found a bit of solace after talking to people who have lost a parent who described the same exact feeling. Didn't mean to make this about me, I found comfort in knowing I wasn't alone and just wanted to share the message. Wishing the best for you, be well.
@@dyl1350 Thank you. Don't worry, this conversations shouldn't be about me.
I think it's wonderful that your father raised such a thoughtful and sensitive man.
What a brilliant comment
I’ve had two people in my life who passed away recently. One suddenly and quite young, the other one we’ve been preparing for a couple of months beforehand. Both of these have affected me in different ways but most of all, I’ve been forced to think about my recent, increasing fear of death. I’ve come out as trans a couple of years ago and for the first time I’ve been able to see a future for myself in which I grow old with people I love. I don’t want to die, I’ve only just started loving life truly.
I'm sorry for your losses.
transition is the scariest thing because it makes death scary again, i think. im sorry for your losses.
I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for your loss. And that is comment made me cry a little. I feel very similarly to you. I’ve only just started medically transitioning. I’ve been suicidal most of my life and I finally don’t have those thoughts 70% of the time. I’m afraid of being killed when I leave my home and I want to live so badly. I’ve lived wanting to die and I finally don’t want that, and it’s the scariest time to be trans in America. (Thank you for sharing btw and I hope you and your family can heal together)
Thank you for sharing, and I'm sorry for your losses, I hope you find peace and acceptance. Your comment is very thought-provoking for me. I'm cis but I do my best to listen to the stories of trans people so I can better support them, and the idea of getting a "second" life or "new" life after transition is one that I've been aware of before, but never really thought too deeply about. The idea that it can give someone hope for the future and a reason to live, while also recontextualizing a fear of mortality, is a bit profound I think. Thank you for offering your perspective :)
I feel very similarly. I was catatonically depressed and obsessively suicidal from the age of 11ish to when I came out, at 16. I’m about to turn 25. When it first hit me, shortly after I started T at 18, that I was scared of dying, I was overjoyed. Now whenever I re-realize it, there’s still joy there, but more fear-I’ve been through more and I see death as a real possibility now as opposed to an abstract. It’s terrifying. I’m not religious but I beg God to let me live when I get really stuck in the fear. I still remember having no fear of death at all, actively lusting after it and seeking it out. It’s so strange.
This video felt so intimate and lovely. I guess we are all running to our deaths some faster than others but at least we aren't alone in this. I've thought about death a lot and now I try not too because it's something you can't avoid and no amount of thinking has allowed me to control it as some kind of deathly savant jean grey. I'm sorry about your father.
I'm 41 years old. My mother died in a fire two years ago. She was exactly 60.
I found myself relating to this video on so many levels that it's difficult for me to articulate it. Thank you for making it.
I saw Carousel recently and my interpretation was that it was a dark subversion of that sort of broadway musical. The Hungarian play it’s based on is a bleak metaphor for the impossible conditions of the working class. What I got from Carousel however was that it was about the impulsive cycle of self destructive behavior that goes round and round. In a way, it’s brilliant
I'm glad you're discussing this. As a hospice nurse I find that not enough people in America discuss death and when people are confronted with their loved one's death they don't have the capacity to make it out of the denial stage until it's too late. Funnily enough my patients who are dying actually tend to accept their own mortality a lot easier than their family members do and often welcome it.
If anyone wants a good book to read I highly recommend Being Mortal by Dr. Atul Gawande, I think it should be required reading in school.
I think death is one of those things that is infinitely abstract until it's right in front of us. People don't generally get to experience it and keep living so we don't really have stories to share about the feeling of it and I think humans are actually kind of bad at imagining physical experiences as concepts especially since very few of us have any clue what our death will be like. Finality is scary, but also I think there is something valuable about appreciating life as a one time deal so we live in a way where we focus on enjoying it and being happy instead of spending all our time trying to avoid death or fearing it.
Bit of a tangent there but anyways I'm glad people like you exist. Death will come for us all and we deserve to be comfortable and have caring people around us when our times come. Thanks for what you do.
@@iamjustkiwi I agree that people shouldn't fixate on avoiding or fearing death, but I think just having a few times throughout life where you truly contemplate mortality will make healthier people. The families who have all accepted that one of my patients is dying are genuinely some of the best people I've ever known. The ones who hey stuck in the denial loop often aren't able to see outside of their own perspective
My mother died about ten years ago. She too was about 60 years old when cancer took her.
She died a somewhat bitter woman. Complaining about non-issues until the last time I saw her.
I fear that this may happen to me. Being too obsessed with what I deem is wrong with the world to see what was good in my life.
this one hit particularly hard. the other day i was on my way to see my sister and i was freezing cold until i got on the train and thought "why is it that when i'm cold i feel like i will never be warm again?" like obviously on an intellectual level i understand that isn't the case but on some instinctive level it's how i feel. my father is terminally ill. i have been through my own struggle with a potentially deadly disease in the time since his diagnosis. and in what seems like another lifetime at this point, i lived for several years in bucharest, a time and place i miss dearly but can never get back. anyway, thanks for the video.
"I would like to show my father he was wrong, though even if he was alive I never could."
I love this line. It illustrates how self-righteous and closed-minded human beings can be (myself included). In some cases, about some beliefs or perspectives, someone changing our minds is as unlikely as someone changing our mind across worlds, after we've died. After all, even while alive, we do inhabit different worlds in some regards.
Oh wow, I read this differently, as a kind of situation where one feels they can't actually tell another person, especially their father, that they are wrong. Like how I may fantasize about debating religion with a Jehova Witness, but would never actually do that when one is in front of me.
I'm afraid I can't watch this upload, even though I don't think I've ever missed an upload by you. As a person with existential OCD, my fear of death can be actually severely, life-ruiningly debilitating if I get triggered too badly. Even just seeing this title and thumbnail in my feed gave me a punch to the throat that hasn't gone away yet. But I support everyone in the comments section who are all feeling their feelings. This is one subject absolutely everyone can relate to no matter where you're from. I guess there's some beauty in that but tbh death just sucks no matter what.
I feel you, had this issue throughout my early teens. Only after ssris and getting busy with life have I been able to let go of these thoughts.
i recommend you reading about non-dualism, i read specifically Leo Hartong's Awekening to the dream, i let go of my ego identity and maybe that can help to calm your thoughts.
@@MJ-eh8erI have OCD and leanring about my ego and the ways it hurts me helped my anxiety a lot
I think about death and feel the same way you do. Sometimes, I hyperventilate and panic about it. I also see the morbid humor in reminding myself and you that we will one day be dead and all our memories and experiences will evaporate into meaningless whispers in the halls of history.
I have OCD as well and death was such a scary thing to me that I straight up denied that I would die for the first many years of my life and I still do that today. I feel your pain man.
During the start of Covid, a time defined by death, my mother died. 2 months later, my uncle died. Another 2 months and my cat was dead. Once I was done fearing that I was cursed and everyone around me would die, I began to think of my own death for the first time in my 15 year old life. I was terrified of death, but I also dreaded living. I don’t know which one was worse.
Now that I enjoy life again, I think of death less. But I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t scare me still. I hope when I’m old I can make peace with it, and until then I just hope I survive past my mom, who died at 43.
I’ve come to define an ideology that takes over my brain some times, I call it momentalism. It’s the idea that everything you’ve ever been is in the present. I only exsist right now, in this moment. I know, some I’m 15 and this is deep shit, but hear me out. I begin to worry, if I’m sad right now what is the point of living if all I am is right now. I think the most important moment is the one right before death, I hope I am happy in mine but I know it will likely just be pain and confusion. When I’m happy, in that moment I don’t care about momentalism. I hope I stay happy a bit longer.
Weirdly chronic clinical depression can pretty much rob you of a fear of death, or of fear at all really. You know you've hit a true rock bottom when you don't fear death nor do you crave it. You just think "oh I guess that will happen, nothing I can do about it so why bother." Real death is complete and total apathy.
I'm hoping I can help make the idea of "momentalism" into something less negative for you. I think it might be good to try and extend momentalism a bit more.
What about the moment in the future, right before you die, makes it more important than the moment you're reading this right now? Or when you were petting your cat, or when you will be graduating high school, or when you find yourself staring at a ceiling trying to sleep?
Philosophically, I think in a pretty similar way, and the philosophy of "momentalism" seems very similar to Buddhist philosophies on non-essentialism.
Imagine if every time you slept, you died, and an identical person in every way replaced you, except a little older and a little better rested.
How would this knowledge change your life? Would you be afraid to sleep, knowing that you'd lose whatever you believe "you" to be?
The belief is a bit more extreme than that. It's that "you" don't exist at all. That in a way, you might as well die and be replaced every single moment.
Understanding this philosophy has helped me dread the future a bit less, and think less about my last years that I'll live and more about the moment I'm in right now. There's some unfathomable amount of fleeting moments that'll never return that I'm going to live. Every single time a moment passes, I'll never be there again, and in a way, it's not like it was *me* who was there. So, I ought to prepare good moments for the ones that'll control this body after me.
I hope this is helpful to you, and I hope you can enjoy your moments of happiness, and know that in your moments of pain that they will pass.
@@strayiggytvi don’t think i have depression, but i guess that’s me. i don’t fear death in the same way a terminally ill person doesn’t fear it. i am slowly rotting away, as is everyone, only i give myself 60 years instead of a couple months.
@@wren_. the likelihood of you getting wrecked by something far earlier than 60 is higher than you want to admit. unless you have a minimum of 700 million dollars. you are at the mercy of the desires of those who do, and they dont have a limit to what they're willing to force everyone else into. this is the cause of all modern war too.
In physics, someone who leaves Earth will age quicker than someone who stays on Earth, so when they return, the person who stayed on Earth will have experienced time differently than the person in space. Time (actully "timespace") exists, even if the concept is abstract and can't be captured in a bottle. You simply exist at a point on its curvature in the "now" and your past and future selves exist on a different point. Just as you exist in this very moment and can look back at your younger self and think "I wish I did X" or "I'm glad I did Y", your future self exists at a moment in time to look back at your current self and say the same thing. Treat your future self well. They deserve it the same way the people you know and care about do.
My father died of cancer when he was 34, and I 13. I am now 37. I have suffered from terrible death anxiety my whole life. Right now, even as I type this, I feel the chest tightness. The death gas. It's hard to know whether you need your mind or body checked. True inevitability is impossible to accept. The 2 deaths are always on my mind.
My dad got diagnosed with cancer 4 years ago. Lost his bladder last year. He was 47. My aunt died suddenly of COVID 2 gears ago.
I was diagnosed with diabetes a year ago. I'm 27. Every little thing reminds me of the inevitable. I'm always thinking about it. Always making plans for danger to prolong life a little bit more. Every experience and decision is a transaction measured in time for me. It's not something I can help.
I've struggled with death anxiety and panic attacks since before I could read, and it only got worse after graduation. I have developed coping mechanisms but it's never enough to make it go away. It's just a part if my life I've had to learn to deal with.
this is excellent. i’m at the point in my life, nearly 24, where i am starting to feel and see age for the first time. i am losing my hair, i’m winded going up stairs, i have new aches and injuries and wrinkles. i know i’m young, but for the first time, i don’t feel like i’ll be young forever. the bulletproof teenage energy is gone and i’ve settled into something slower. it’s a strange corner to turn, and now i’ve turned it i can see it’s all corners from here, round and round. thanks for this
This is a very thought provoking essay. I guess my personal experience on the topic is that maybe 5 or so years ago I was deeply, unshakably terrified of death. The idea of not existing anymore would put me in a really nasty mental spiral if I focused on it too much. In the time between then and now that feeling has changed; these days when I think about dying primarily I'm just sad that there will eventually come a time when I no longer get to see what comes next. The idea that my window into human history has a distinct, inevitable endpoint just makes me ache inside. I don't know if that's better or worse than being afraid, or if that's even something that could be measured in those terms. I guess my hope is that if I continue to knead on the idea in my head my feelings on it will keep evolving, and by the time I hit the end of the road I'll have made some kind of peace with it.
Best case scenario though I'd love to become a spooky ghost after I die and spend the rest of time haunting people. I think that could be really cool for me.
When I was a teenager I talked with my grandma about death and fear of death and she said she wasn't afraid, while I was, terribly afraid. And I even got afraid of the idea that, like her, I might no longer be afraid. I know what you mean of the difference between panic and sadness, I still alternate between them. But at least I'm no longer afraid of not being afraid, so I guess that's something.
@spinozatheobvious626 I feel very similar to you except that the idea that someday I won't be afraid is rather soothing. I like to imagine that death is only so terrifying because we are genetically programmed to fear it. If you could turn that off death would just become a natural part of everything
@@spinozatheobvious626 for me its the other way around. Im a hypocondriac after a police raid in my house that left me profoundly traumatized. I am afraid of dying every single second ever since i was 15. Nothing is as soothing to me than to think that maybe someday i wont be afraid anymore
You’ve perfectly described the thoughts and spirals that i’ve been going through recently. Nice to know i’m not the only one with a brain that hates them
I feel the exact same way. From terror, to dread, now to melancholy.
This video is so timely. Just 2 days ago I was crippled by the fear of oblivion. I came to two conclusions.
1. My fear of death is confirmation that I want to live.
2. My life should be spent with my loved ones, doing things I love. I don't want to waste my one chance at existence.
My father died a little over a year ago and I am still utterly devastated, devastated that our broken relationship can never be mended except in my own mind. This year has been a long walk in the freezing wind. Thanks Big Joel for unexpected solidarity
beautiful
A beautifully short, yes succinct video. As there are thousands of films, books, and other media addressing this topic, the one that really hit home for me was a film named "Ikiru". To give a brief synopsis, a bureaucrat gets a terminal illness diagnosis and he attempts to find meaning in his life. The film obviously goes into various directions and offers a lot of different messages (it's a Kurosawa film after all) but mainly it taught me to always be present, always be mindful. There will be good days, there will be bad days. There are human beings that owned (what was essentially, to them) the world and we hardly remember any of their names, and the ones we do, are often because they were the most abhorrent. So I know for certain I will be long forgotten, but if I can make my little, insignificant space around me, and my 'tribe' have an easier time and a better time for having been around, then my life will have had some meaning. I do not fear death, but I do fear becoming bitter and angry at the world and those around me.
It was eerie to hear you describe the sensation of phantom heart issues. Since my cousin passed recently, I've been experiencing the same; "it's probably just gas I can't expel, but what if it's a heart attack" and all. My cousin didn't even have a heart attack, it was a series of complications from a heart-related infection. We still don't fully know, the doctors could only guess after keeping her for months.
But I got the sense talking to her in her hospital bed, that it really was, ultimately, caused by a broken heart. A resignation. And that has haunted me more than any other death I have experienced.
And so comes my subsequent, urgent need to be remembered. For something. Anything. So that I can exist outside time, instead of vanishing inside it.
That need creates a tightness in my chest.
I couldn't help but think of two Vonnegut quotes that get me through the day: "We are put on this earth to fart around, and dont let anyone tell you otherwise" and, said and written when he was in his twilight years, "if I ever die, God forbid…"
I have terrible death anxiety, but those two sayings help.
Wow this video came out of nowhere, I just clicked it randomly on my home page and suddenly I’m confronted by one of the best video essays / stories I’ve had the pleasure of hearing. The opening story about running because of your health, almost running away from death itself, really hit me. I’m doing a similar thing and I can relate to the feeling
This is a rare video that made me sit quietly with my thoughts and my emotions and my cup of tea for a while instead of jumping to the next video to keep my mind reeling and occupied and distracted; it made me consider myself and my loved ones and my understanding (or lack thereof) of life and death and why I do things and why I want to do things. Thank you for this.
i love this comment section. i’ve been terrified of death (the deaths of the people i love, but even more of my own) for as long as i can remember, but i’ve never really heard anyone else talk about it. it’s nice to know other people think about it too, it’s nice to know that i’m not the only one who’s afraid.
It's gonna be scary no matter what, but God some are terrible lol. Like why does everything have to be so painful sounding
Frankly one of the worst things about fear of death is that there is hardly a situation considered appropriate for talking about such a topic. So we all end up feeling alone
I've been having a weird year of grappling with mortality and whatnot. Several deaths in my family and friend group, which has led me to developing a panic disorder, mostly in the times when I'm zoning out in a stationary task: washing my hair, folding my clothes, running on a treadmill. I can't explain enough how kind it is to have this video essentially vocalize my panic attack - not as the panic itself, but detached enough to explain how I'm feeling more broadly. Hope that made some kind of sense. I really appreciate this upload.
I'm sorry for your loss, I hope your father's memory will be a blessing and a guidance.
I don’t know how to word this correctly but the first few minutes already had me in tears. You have such a good way of simplifying complex topics without treating the “audience” like children, it’s incredibly refreshing and inspirational. Thank you.
As a runner who started just like you - you won’t stop at 20 minutes. You will keep going. Your film was great. Thank you for sharing your truth with us, and never bullshitting or condescending to us. Reminds me of Murakami’s book on running.
My father recently died of an accident. He fell of the roof. We never got along well. And the main thing that defined our relationship were all the things left unsaid so we could co-exist.
I had little contact with him in the past 2 years. Despite seeing him almost every week my life before.
Sometimes I do wonder what life would have become if he had lived.
But then I realize that it wouldn’t have changed anything. We would never have talked. He would never have moved on from his resentments. He would never have made healthier desicions
And it breaks me.
The fact that the version in which he died a sudden death is propably the most peacful is a tragedy that will haunt me until I'll join him in oblivion
I really love the pacing of this video. The way it jumps from topic to topic that are tangentially related to one bigger picture is how I talk to myself when I'm cleaning at home or on walks by myself. It feels like someone just sorting their thoughts as they work through them.
I don't wanna be such an overt glazer on main but wow. I think I love this video. You are a hell of a writer
I read the bell jar when I was 16, and in a pretty rough mental state, and at the time I held a lot of scorn for the inevitably of Esther’s death and Plath as well. This video, even paralleling my experience seeing some of van gough’s paintings in person 2 years ago, resonates so much with me. Thank you for having the courage to be so honest, it’s unexplainable how meaningful it is to me to hear someone go through such similar reflections and to feel understood in that way. ❤
This rather timely for me. As it's bound to always be for someone. A best friend of mine since high school killed himself last week. All quite unexpected. He had plans ahead and all, there was no discussion, no notes, nothing. But he set himself up at his work and hung himself there quite mythologically. The suggestion that it wasn't all futile, that the rest of his life didn't therefore become undone and pointless, is a little difficult to combat in practice. I like the sentiment though, and this was a good reminder.
So sorry for your loss
That’s such a recent loss, I hope you’re surrounded by love & support during this time of grief. I think it’s normal & fair to grieve the fact that things your friend may have worked towards will never “pay off”, mourning aspirations he’ll never achieve. I know it’s not enough, it can never be enough, but I find some small comfort in coping by letting what my lost loved ones have meant to me change the way I move in the world. If your friend’s love changed your life, and you carry that love with you, it can be a little easier to fight back the thoughts that their life is now meaningless in death. Please be safe and take care.
At 3:24 your line of narration ends with "...how quickly we can blot out the past," and you turn back and point. It's like the image of you, the proverbial Past, turned to the viewer in a lighthearted confrontation. And that's just classic Big Joel tight comedy right there and that's the reason I always come back to your videos. Above the rest you just got taste. Your videos exude style and personality. I also love that the black border over this footage acts as both a way for the animation to stand out, and as a way to distance the viewer before involving the viewer directly.
I think about death every day. During my low moments, a phrase repeats in my head- "I wish I was dead." It gives me a strange, apathetic kind of comfort. I'm not sure why.
My brother died suddenly last week, he was only 21. This video showed up in my recommended. Thank you for what you had to say, it helped me.
My mom and dad passed away in the last two years very close together, both of cancer and other complications on top. It's been very hard, I'm only 22 and not very stable so life without them is a confusing scary mess. My mom passed from a ruptured bowel due to the chemotherapy, which she slowly dehydrated from, on top of the hellish nightmare eating food was for her during that. Many factors played into that, but shortly after learning those details, I hospitalized myself for my mental health's sake, and spent most of the time there in agony unable to eat or drink a thing, which made me sicker and sicker. Nothing they tested me with showed anything, and I'm certain it was psychological given every night spent in that hospital I was haunted imagining how miserable my poor 65lb mother felt before she died.
My father passed away a little bit before at the start of 2022, and he had gone into hospice for terminal cancer and lyme disease which caused him to go septic. His death has been just as traumatic if not more in other ways, and one thing I'm constantly feeling about him, is a desire for his last dream to happen. I just want his death and life to have lead to something exactly like what he wanted wanted it to, but things just aren't working out the more we try to postpone. I know he had many pipe dreams, but I really believed in the final fight he put up for what he wanted this time. Knowing I have to move on and follow my own path at this point, and let his end is the hardest thing for me, and I just wish I knew whether that desire is more for my own relief or pure love for my father. Irdk.
I already watched on nebula and love this deeply personal video. I related a Lot. I lost my dad 2 years ago, and he had a long heart failure decline. I’ve spent a lot of the past two years going through the same thoughts of what my dad thought about things.
Thank you
this feels like a poem, it’s beautiful good job, i come back to this because i’ve been thinking about it since i saw it yesterday
i love this video. being for most of life surrounded by suicidal or terminally ill people and having been suicidal a lot too, i always end up writing and thinking about death. it's my favorite topic to make art about. i love what you said about it here
I realized that I was going to die someday when I was twelve years old. It was late at night and I was alone at home, and I had a panic attack because of it. I had another existential crisis later in my teens and couldn't sleep until i was completely exhausted. I had tried to open up about the sheer terror i was experiencing but i either got brushed off or ignored. I still occasionally get scared, but i try to find a comfort in that nothing lasts forever. It's a sad thing, but I think it's also beautiful in that aspect. Nothing should go on and on. It makes what time we have all the more precious.
I'm from Romania and tbh I always hated being born here I felt ostracized my whole life
Your videos are comforting to listen to
Also I've always wanted to be a runner, your stuff is inspiring. Thank you so much for the video. I am so grateful for your existence
A lot of romanians I've met have felt that way, not quite fitting in, a country with no hope, somewhat isolated from the rest of the world. Someone I really loved was there for some time, and often its hard to not to think about her when I think of the country, and I remember how we were very close over that same kind of isolation and never fitting in. You never see the way things end, and how people are affected by what life throws at them till its too late sometimes.
We arrived in Bucharest last week, spending a month here. When I told the immigration officer we are here for a vacation, he gave me gave me such a "wtf would you come here for" look.
@@henryfisher9948as a romanian, the best way to describe my country, its citizens and its situation is "hopeless". the past, the present and the future hold nothing good. im a nature enjoyer, and i love going on hikes, or in the woods, or wherever i can. the overwhelming beauty of this land contrasts so much with the helplessness of this shithole. i just turned 18 and i have no idea what party to vote because i know all of them will steal from us and abuse us
if this is too private feel free to ignore this but as a fellow romanian, i do wonder why you feel ostracized. i;m just curious about your viewpoint
Same, this country has nothing but depression and misery for those not content with it. It's a wasteland devoid of art, hope and willpower. You should become a runner and run away from here as fast as you can, because it's going to get much worse in the future. The betrayal of Soviet communism and the subsequent betrayal of the privatisation, followed by years of constant betrayal by the state and the populace themselves have turned this country into a graveyard of opportunities and an insult to life. There is no Romanian culture beyond the shared despair.
Holy crap, man. I am beyond words. I wish I had the - courage? ability? - the whatever-it-takes to string my thoughts about life together as beautifully as you have here. This feels so personal and raw. Thank you for sharing this.
I really enjoy the way you talk *around* the titular subject here, not even indirectly addressing it until the final lines. It’s interesting, that explicit invitation to listen to the words not being said.
Really honest and vulnerable video BJ, thanks for sharing. My dad died in 2020 but we were pretty estranged. He was very sick my whole life, with diabetes, kidney issues, shot liver, heart disease, horrible depression, possibly BPD, and a relationship with alcohol that dominated his mind from the age of 13 until his death in his late 60s, regardless of being sober for the final 27 years of his life. It was very strange to know this dying man was always in my life but he always managed to stay alive and seemingly devoted most of his later years to writing about sobriety. I'm 34 now and am starting to feel and see the effects of living a very lethargic life. I'm busy but not fit, somewhat successful but relaxed. I know I need to start taking care of my body and my heart, but find it difficult to care about my health much. Glad you found a rhythm.
My mum died suddenly of a heart attack at 60 and her dad in his 50’s and his dad before him too. At this point I’ve maybe accepted I won’t be here for a long time.
My mum was ill for a long time with unrelated illness, we couldn’t do a lot together. Realistically even if her heart problem got caught, the same or worse could have happened anyway.
I like to imagine another reality where we had a nice life together, with no big troubles. I couldn’t allow any kind of unrealistic though like that until recently. And it is the only thing that helps me get in touch with my grief.
Taking a moment to appreciate the editing, script writing, and animation in this video. Very artfully done.
I really like the way you ended this. The way it mirrors (and in so doing flips) the opening fears to something absurd and hopeful. It's beautiful. Thanks.
I recall learning about the musical 'Carousel,' adapted from Ferenc Molnár's play 'Liliom.' from my creative arts professor at university, Michael Ballam. Unlike the play, the musical introduced a more hopeful ending. Rodgers and Hammerstein, the creators, were initially unsure how Molnár would react to these changes, particularly since they significantly altered the ending without consulting or notifying the original author. Contrary to their concerns, when Molnár saw the play, he was actually very pleased with the adaptation. He especially admired the new ending, expressing his appreciation enthusiastically. This reaction was a relief to the creators who were actually nervous he would be angry.
I have no fear of a new big Joel upload and this is looking to be much more intimate than normal. Looking forward to watching it!
I keep watching this video. Like once or twice a week. I can't stop. I think this is the best thing you've made. It's devastating. I love it.
Coming in from the cold feels so damn good it makes me want to stand outside in the winter for 30 seconds just to step back in lol
I lost my mom when she was 51,back in 2015. Started dealing with panic attacks and fear of dying a couple of years later. there's something about losing a parent that makes you very aware of how fragile and short our own lives are. There's not much to say other than it gets better but it's always there like a shadow behind me.
Impermanence definitely dominates a lot of my thinking. Thanks for making this man.
Amazing video, Joel. What was really fascinating for me is that I have written and directed a play called "Chest Press" that my theater company has been doing for years now here in Madrid and this play explores the fear of death through the bridges between the Bible and the gym. There is one actor that runs in a treadmill for 25 minutes every night we do the show. It's funny (and sad, and compelling) that, despite us not knowing each other, we have similar concerns symbolised in similar ways.
I revisit this video pretty often, I think it's probably your most meaningful work.
I miss my dad and I miss arguing with him and telling him he's wrong about things too Mr. Joel. In January it will be 2 years since he departed. He was already 50 when I was born so in a strange way I'd been preparing for his death for my entire life. And even when it was slow and somewhat predictable it did not change or lessen the vast void that exists where he once was in my life.
Man, I love how you connect creative works to mold a philosophical quandary. It's your unique strength as a video creator.
You're really stepping up your game, Big Joel. This video is personal and reflective, with visuals that match perfectly with the tone.
Beautiful and moving. You put a piece of your heart into every video and I appreciate your pure authenticity.
I'm not sure why, but the sentiment you have about wanting to talk to your father again to disagree with him about a musical made me cry.
I have 2 notable men that I never got to have a full, adult conversation with. One was my maternal grandfather, a fellow chemical engineer who died over a decade before my conception. The other, my maternal grandfather, who got dementia when I was probably around 8, and who's decline in appearance shocked me into not crying for years after I saw him when I was 13. I hadn't seen him since I was 5, when he imparted on me a love for coin collecting, something I maintain to this day.
I've always wanted to talk to my maternal grandfather about his experience in Vietnam, something which left him physically and emotionally scarred. But I'm rethinking that. My aunt gave me a book that my paternal grandfather edited, leading me to learn he was an organic chemist. And I thought to myself that I would love to express to him that I hate organic chemistry, so we could lightheartedly spar about it. I think maybe that's the better urge, having seen how your similar statement about Carousel has impacted me. It's a mundane thing to want, but it's the backbone of how I connect to people. I think I understand why I cried now.
This is very moving, thank you for sharing ❤
I lost my grandmother almost 2 years ago. It still weighs heavily on me today because all of her flaws aside, she was a very wonderful woman. I never cared about what her childhood was like or her relationship with history. I cared about watching movies with her, taking care of her cats together, picking apples in the fall, or even just talking about what we were up to at the time. Its harder to not care about her past now because that's all I've got. There's so much we'd talk about if she was still here, but I'm only now interested in her past because I know I won't ever get the chance to talk about the present with her anymore
This video essay destroyed me.
I have a toy carousel I've had since I was a baby, a gaudy, hastily painted little music box with 40 years of wear. I remember the existential horror, before I had the vocabulary to name it, of listening to the at first cheerful tune gradually slow and abruptly stop, and thinking it was as subtle a metaphor for death as my mind could handle. I've wondered for 40 years where that song came from until 10 minutes and 45 seconds into this video when I realized it's the carousel from the movie carousel about a dead man coming to terms with the meaninglessness of his death. I thought about my lost grandparents and my uncle, who died before I can remember. I thought about the hours I've spent on a teadmill trying to be a better father for my children (or ar least for longer). I thought about the awkward intimacy of this para social relationship where you can reveal so much to me without ever knowing who I am. I broke down crying and shared this video with my dad, who I thank God is still alive.
I avoided watching this video because I knew it would make me sad.
It did, but it also helped I think. So thank you for making it. I think it might be art.
The most hauntingly beautiful yet humorous and relatable video I have seen on this platform. Thank you Joel
I love this elevated collage format of Video Essay, less directly tied to thesis and instead focused on theme, feels like a step towards a more emotive landscape
As a huge Big Joel fan, this video touches me in a way that no other video by him does
Very fitting that I was suggested a song from the Synecdoche, New York soundtrack at the end.
As some who has been living with health anxiety since I was a kid, with no known genetic illnesses but still thinking that for some reason I am about to drop dead all of the sudden since I was 10, this video reaches me in a way I can't explain.
The simplicity of life and death is horrifying until you lose someone very close to you. Then it’s almost comforting. Thank you Joel. I lost my dad two years ago to cardiac arrest and I didn’t know I needed this.
I've watched a lot of video essays and I have to say, no one does it like big joel. He just has a way with words like no other
This is one of my my favorite videos from an already incredible channel. It resonated with me in a way that's hard to explain off-the-cuff, like a really amazing poem. Thank you for making this and putting it out there.
thank you for this video Joel, it stirred up indescribable emotions. This video is art at its finest
Watched this on nebula already but came to say that this video is a work of art and I found it deeply moving
I clicked on this video because I was intrigued by the art on the thumbnail. Then I stayed for the whole beautiful existential video. Thank you Joel.
I LITERALLY LOVE YOU SOOOOO MUCH your eloquence is god like. i truly cannot think of anyone else who can put together such a beautiful composition of thoughts.
This video touched my heart in a way that few of your videos do, I enjoy watching your essays but this spoke to me about things I worry about every day and struggle to find solace in. For that I want to give a genuine thanks, there's no guarantee this message will be seen but if it is let it be known I appreciate you for making this and your work in general.
I like Big Joel's art. Many parts of this video I connect with and I enjoy the effort and vulnerability it took to make this video.
i'm so sorry you lost your father. My husband passed away from a heart attack at the age of 51. I definitely think about death a lot more now.
I put off watching this video for awhile. Going through a hard time, didn't want to think about death. But it was exactly what I needed today. Moved to tears. Thanks Big Joel. Thank you for sharing. It helps in ways you can't imagine. 💜