Dying to Live
Feb. 4th, 2003 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tinhuvielartanisI read one of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
asim's posts today and it got me to thinking about how we perceive life and death.
As I said in my response to Asim, I've met some terminally ill folks before and they all seem to have that same 'Zen' quality about them. They seem to be living more than ever before because they've embraced the inevitibility of their death. Mortality is very real for them and they therefore seem to taste the sweetness of their own existence moreso than anyone not walking their path could imagine.
I must admit I have been envious of this quality and wonder if only the very old, who can clearly see the End, and the terminal have the ability to achieve this state of mind. Every day I find myself enduring the drudgery of my life with not a little bit of cynicism, very often disgregarding the good things about my life, and I wonder how things would change if I suddenly found out that I had only a few months to live. Would I find myself living more in those few months than I ever have in my entire 35 years?
What if we, as a Spiritual Race, have forgotten the message of Mortality and spurned this gift of Death? What if we die so that we might better appreciate living and that the knowledge of this death is supposed to encourage us to embrace this life experience with which we have been so blessed? Perhaps when we forgot that Death was our friend, we also forgot the fine art of living and damned ourselves to a life of boredom, fear, and monotony. We're tied too tightly to this Vale of Tears, I think. Perhaps if it were nakedly apparent that what we have is temporary, then we could all see through the eyes of a dying person and know the joy of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth firsthand.
I don't know if this is at all true. I want to believe that this place is a school to which we return and excel and graduate eventually, as we help the Great Spirit try to figure Itself out by bringing our own special piece of the puzzle. Sometimes, I can delve deeply into this state of mind and almost be at peace. More often than not, however, I find myself trapped in the forgetfulness of my own potential, ignoring Death and fearing Life.
If I believed in the traditional ideas of sin, I'd have to say that's the greatest one of all, when people have become so inattentive to our own gifts and forgetful of our gifts, that we only become aware of them at the time of our death. It's a shame and a waste when we have to be on the verge of death in order to truly live.
asim's posts today and it got me to thinking about how we perceive life and death.As I said in my response to Asim, I've met some terminally ill folks before and they all seem to have that same 'Zen' quality about them. They seem to be living more than ever before because they've embraced the inevitibility of their death. Mortality is very real for them and they therefore seem to taste the sweetness of their own existence moreso than anyone not walking their path could imagine.
I must admit I have been envious of this quality and wonder if only the very old, who can clearly see the End, and the terminal have the ability to achieve this state of mind. Every day I find myself enduring the drudgery of my life with not a little bit of cynicism, very often disgregarding the good things about my life, and I wonder how things would change if I suddenly found out that I had only a few months to live. Would I find myself living more in those few months than I ever have in my entire 35 years?
What if we, as a Spiritual Race, have forgotten the message of Mortality and spurned this gift of Death? What if we die so that we might better appreciate living and that the knowledge of this death is supposed to encourage us to embrace this life experience with which we have been so blessed? Perhaps when we forgot that Death was our friend, we also forgot the fine art of living and damned ourselves to a life of boredom, fear, and monotony. We're tied too tightly to this Vale of Tears, I think. Perhaps if it were nakedly apparent that what we have is temporary, then we could all see through the eyes of a dying person and know the joy of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth firsthand.
I don't know if this is at all true. I want to believe that this place is a school to which we return and excel and graduate eventually, as we help the Great Spirit try to figure Itself out by bringing our own special piece of the puzzle. Sometimes, I can delve deeply into this state of mind and almost be at peace. More often than not, however, I find myself trapped in the forgetfulness of my own potential, ignoring Death and fearing Life.
If I believed in the traditional ideas of sin, I'd have to say that's the greatest one of all, when people have become so inattentive to our own gifts and forgetful of our gifts, that we only become aware of them at the time of our death. It's a shame and a waste when we have to be on the verge of death in order to truly live.
