Is Amnesia the Same as Death?—The Idea That Our Past and Future Lives Are Simply Other People

The other day, I said to my elderly father, “Shouldn’t you start making preparations in case something happens?”

He laughed and replied, “I still have at least another ten years!”

He has already lived beyond the average life expectancy, but apparently he still considers himself perfectly healthy.

Perhaps people never want to believe that they will die, no matter how old they become.

I, on the other hand, have often thought about death since I was young. It is not because I am pessimistic. I simply find it interesting as a philosophical question.

Every human being will die. That is an unavoidable fact.

So what does it mean to die?

Is the Person I Was in a Past Life Really Me?

Buddhism includes the idea of reincarnation.

It is the belief that after death, we are reborn as another person or living creature.

Suppose someone told me, “In your previous life, you were an Edo-period samurai.”

How would I react?

I would probably just say, “Oh, I see.”

I have no memory of what that samurai thought, whom he loved, or what kind of life he lived.

So why should I regard him as the same person as me?

Even if souls exist and mine had carried over from a previous life, a person with no continuity of memory would be a complete stranger to me.

Put another way, perhaps what creates the existence I call “myself” is not the continuity of my body or soul, but the continuity of my memory.

That thought raised another question.

If I Lost My Memory, Would That Be the Same as Death?

Suppose an accident caused me to lose every memory of my life up to that point.

I would not know my own name, my family, my friends, or anything I had done with my life.

My body would be the same. My heart would still be beating. Legally, I would still be the same person.

But what would the situation look like from my own consciousness?

Where would the “me” who had existed until the previous day have gone?

All my past experiences, relationships, and accumulated memories would have disappeared.

How would that differ from the old “me” dying and another personality being born inside the same body?

It would not be medical death. But in terms of the subjective continuity of the self, the two seem almost identical to me.

In other words, death for me does not necessarily mean that my heart stops.

It means a complete break in the memory that connects who I am now to who I was before.

Is My Past Self Really the Same Person I Am Now?

Complete amnesia is an extreme example, but in reality, we lose memories in our daily lives.

How much do we remember about our childhood?

At the time, we must have thought about many things every day, feeling joy and sadness. Yet most of it can no longer be recalled.

The child I was was unquestionably me.

But from where I stand today, that child also feels somewhat like a different person.

My way of thinking and values were different. I barely remember what worried me or what I looked forward to.

Memory, then, does not only break suddenly one day. It also fades gradually over time.

Thinking about it this way changes how my present worries look.

I failed at work. Someone said something unpleasant to me. I am so angry that I cannot let it go.

But will I remember that event ten years from now?

Even if I do, I may think only, “Oh yes, that happened.”

A problem that feels serious to me today may be nothing more than a distant event to my future self.

If my past self feels like another person when viewed from the present, then to my future self, the person I am now may also seem like someone else.

Seen that way, it begins to feel foolish to take today’s worries more seriously than necessary.

Given enough time, the person I am now will also become someone from the past.

To my future self, my present self will be almost like someone living another life that has already ended.

Is the Present the Only Thing That Actually Exists?

The conclusion I eventually reached was the very ordinary idea that what matters is how we live now.

I may die tomorrow.

Or tomorrow, I may suddenly lose every one of my memories.

If that happens, the person I have been until today will disappear.

But that is no reason to give up today’s pleasures.

When I eat something delicious, it tastes good in that moment. When I watch an interesting film, I enjoy it. The time I spend absorbed in something I love has value in itself.

The memory does not need to last forever.

When I think about it, perhaps a life is nothing more than an accumulation of such moments.

Regretting the past will not change it. Worrying about the future is no guarantee that I will live long enough to reach it.

In that case, I should spend more time enjoying the present.

Even So, Humans Assume There Will Be a Tomorrow

Now let me return to the story of my father at the beginning.

My father says he will live for another ten years.

I cannot be quite that optimistic, but if he believes it, perhaps that is its own kind of happiness.

After thinking endlessly about death, I arrived at the conclusion, “Enjoy the present”—an idea that can be found almost anywhere.

My father, meanwhile, spends each day expecting to live another ten years without thinking about anything so philosophical.

Apparently, there is not much difference between the way I enjoy life after thinking deeply about death and the way my father enjoys it while having no intention of dying.

Perhaps I would have been better off not thinking about it in the first place.