All of my life I have been obsessed with death. Isn't that weird? But it's not a morbid obsession with death, it's a sort of measuring where I stand as the sand from the hourglass slowly runs out.
You see, I have done this before, this thing called life, so I treasure it, oh do I ever. I know how tenuous it is, how fleeting, how tragic and sad and gruesome the end of it might be. Death is that part of life that we never want to look at and when we do, it usually ain't pretty.
So we hide death from view as much as we possibly can, in order for life to shine that much brighter. We try and bury death under distractions and busyness and purpose and goals and future and we can be quite successful with that but death always has the final say.
Were death to be not so, we would have perpetual life and if that were so, what a dysfunctional one that would be, looking around and seeing how we approach life. We’re not exactly aces at that, are we?
Angels are cool
Sandy Millar- Unsplash.com
One of the absolutely amazing things about death- Death! Finis! The End! - is that although everybody knows it's coming, they treat it as if it's nothing to be overly concerned about! You’d think- any animal would think- that if I only have X number of years and that's it I'm gonna be one wild crazy bad ass mo'fo and get what I can while I can get it. Anarchy would rule the day because with no future beyond life, and no God to answer to, there would be zero consequence.
But the very absence of anarchy is telling. It indicates that there is consequence, which is ruled by conscience. No matter what people might say outwardly, they inwardly- even the atheists- believe in God, or something that just might be best left un-pissed off when they transition.
You can hold up a yardstick to any accomplishment in the earthly realm and death only laughs at it. You can rise to the highest position, lord over minions, store gold and art in Swiss vaults deep under the mountains there, and none of that matters at the end.
"Ain't never seen no U-Haul behind no hearse!" I heard some African American lady say once and I thought "Ain't that right!"
'Cuz it is. Death is. So spin out on whatever tangent you want, you ain't gonna spin out on death. Death ain't no fake news.
You can though, as so many do, treat death as something to never, ever think about and be quite sucessful in that approach. So successful that in the end you haven't paid it hardly any mind at all. You almost cheated death in that way. Wow. Good for you. For these people it's like death comes sneakin' around the corner and right at the last second goes "Hello" and it's over.
Is that wrong? Is that right? I don't have an answer for that. All I know is that for me, death is a curiosity, a thread, that once pulled upon, drawn closer, and fully examined, has shown me more about life and what it means than I ever could have imagined. My obsession with death has brought to me books about the afterlife, research on NDE's (Near Death Experiences), and so much more. I don't know exactly what happens after we die but I feel a lot better about it now so when somebody mentions death, or I see that somebody famous has died in the news, I think that they've chosen to transition so that they can go to some heavenly place and reboot their soul, change things around some, so that when they can come back, in all likelihood, to this earthly realm they can try life out again under a different set of conditions and build upon what they already know. It's a beautiful system.
I've heard it said in the future that we'll have this life thing figured out well enough and we'll feel like sticking around longer. We won't need to transiton and be reborn so often. We won't need to pack in a lot of intense experiences.
Sounds good to me. I'm ready for that. Sign me up!
'Cuz an only four score and ten years or so lifespan hasn't even gotten me out of adolescence. I mean, really.