Thinking of Death Can Help Us To Truly Live.
Image by Aron Visuals on Unsplash
I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. My grandmother is becoming more fragile everyday. My father’s degenerative lung disease grows evermore present, but not spoken about. As I deepen in love, connection and intimacy with my partner, I also deepen in awareness that I could lose him at any moment. Life is so fragile, and so precious.
As I was driving on the highway yesterday morning, headed into work, a luxurious white hearse with embellished silver trimming passed me by. And I mean this hearse was luxurious, it was a work of art. It immediately drew my attention, and I looked at the silky white curtains drawn back from the windows, and inside the coffin was easily seen. I thought about the cold dead body lying inside, the soul that no longer dwells there.
“Death is everywhere”, I thought to myself. Whether it’s a dead animal along the side of the road, thoughts or fears of our loved ones passing, getting news that someone we know is sick or in the hospital, reports of death on the news, driving past a cemetery, seeing a dried up worm on the sidewalk, or the screaming and urgent sound of ambulence sirens racing by.
John O’Donohue, in his book Anam Cara, wrote: “There is a presence who walks the road of life with you. This presence accompanies your every moment. It shadows your every thought and feeling. On your own, or with others, it is always there with you. When you were born, it came out of the womb with you, but with the excitement of your arrival, nobody noticed it. Though this presence surrounds you, you may still be blind to its companionship. The name of this presence is death.”
I like thinking of Death as a companion that walks the road of life with me. It makes it sound less menacing, like this companion is more of a friend. Death can be our friend, if we keep him close to our hearts as a reminder that this life is so short and fleeting. Thinking of death every morning when you wake up can help you to be more grateful for life. Perhaps Death is the answer to making better choices—-reminding yourself that you will never get this moment back again, and one day, you will completely run out of moments.
We cannot escape death, and we have little control over how or when we die. We can do our best to stay healthy, to avoid dangerous or risky situations, but we know the truth: Death will come for us all.
And yet, the point of life isn’t to avoid death, or even to stay as safe as possible. As the saying goes, “Ships are safest when in the harbor, but they weren’t built for that.”
No, the point of life is to live. Truly live. The best way we can defeat Death is to honor Life and live it to the fullest, with our hearts wide open. This way, when Death comes for us, and it will, we can smile and say we squeezed every last drop out of life and have no regrets.
Truly living means we celebrate the present moment as a gift. We say what we feel when we feel it, and we mean what we say. We let our loved ones know how much they mean to us. We take risks even though there are no guarantees. We dare to create, to make something in this world, to contribute something of value, something only we can make so that we can leave the world a better place than when we entered it. We say “yes” to opportunities more often than we say no. We listen to our soul’s calling, we follow our gut instincts, we pick ourselves back up again no matter how many times we fall or get our hearts broken. We venture out to discover new lands, new people, new cultures.
So thinking about your own death today, and the death of those you love most, what would you do differently? What would you say that could make a difference in someone else’s life? A simple but heartfelt apology, an act of love, words of encouragement can make a difference. What choices can you make today, and in this moment, that fill your heart and soul with joy and gratitude for this precious life you are given?
After all, there is a fate worse than death, and that is the wasted life. A life full of regrets.
Stop waiting for the right moment to come.
The right moment is now.
