The fear of irrelevancy

I went on a walk along the bay in Rhode Island. It was the path I took daily, so I was sure footed and looking at the horizon, until I almost stumbled upon an animal corpse. I’m not sure what it was. It was so bloated and distorted—spots of brownish gray fur, the size of a small dog but with much tinier legs. It smelled of warm rot and I became immediately afraid.

I stood over it, watching the flies swarm until my heartbeat settled. Then I thought how odd it was that I would be scared of the body. It was natural for animals to die, and she just looked as if she succumbed to the ravages of old age.

Death is scary, I thought to myself as I walked away. I wasn’t sure exactly why. Perhaps the fear upon seeing the dead animal had awoken some ancient part of me—the part that had been passed down by some mystery of evolution. Maybe I inherited the fear from a time when humans needed to worry more about disease or attacks. Perhaps the fear signalled a deeper connection with the animal, and triggered a sense of my own mortality.