life
I guess it is not possible to fully understand death, without also talking about living. As in a wondering question I raised in the previous post - how does the way we view/things we associate with life affect the way we see death?
Ever since I became more conscious of my time on this earth as a finite resource and how ephemeral now is, it changed the way I lived my day to day. The common question many like to ask is, “what if you knew you only had one more day to live?” As expected, most answers will be descriptions of events or activities that are unusual or once-in-a-lifetime, something that is held off from the day-to-day, telling yourself “there is still time” - something out of the mundane and ordinary. “I'll finally tell this person that I love them” or “I'll visit that island I've had on my bucket list for awhile now”. The funny thing I find about this question is that it creates a context that is just a fantasy. It is a fantasy to think we will ever be able to predict when our living will end, a fantasy to think we can see it coming and ‘be ready’ for it, a fantasy to think that the end of our lives is only determined by death.
The end of living can occur in different ways for each person. At least for me, death is only one of the many things that can stop me from living. For some it may be the loss of loved ones, or the loss of a limb, for others it can be getting fired from a job, or moving to another country, or no longer being able to dive into the depths of the ocean.
About a month ago, I was in a room barefoot, with paint-stained hands, in the company of a bunch of long time creatives. As a group, we were made of visual artists, dancers, musicians and producers, each one opened up and softened by the effects of practicing creativity in our lives - and oh, the electric energy of being together, experimenting and making, kept me in a buzz for days.
Being with this group that Wednesday afternoon was really special - two hours of venturing into the forest of the unknown, knowing well these explorers by your side understood that it was more about the journey than the destination. We were all fully onboard for the ride, launching heart-first into the adventure with equal excitement and anticipation for whatever it may bring. There was a collective emotional freedom that afternoon, where anxiety and fear had no place, and where doubt and hesitation took a leap of faith. I remembered thinking to myself at the time how lucky I am to experience life this way - a way that was rich, textured and colourful. For a brief moment, I wondered what life will be like if I wasn't able to interpret music into lines, shapes and colours, or be moved by the passionate movements of an orchestra, or feel the pain of others when they were hurting. What would life be like if I couldn't see beneath the obvious or how each element and being were connected to each other, despite being realms away? Perhaps dull and plain.
As I write this, I'm realising that life and living for me is not just a matter of physically being alive. Awareness of my own mortality is part of living too. Rather than an ending, death is a reminder that the season of being alive is temporary, for how long I will never know, but because it is not forever, it is more important to me that my life is lived on my own terms. Living is an experiment in itself, made up of millions of choices and series of events, in and out of my control, that has carved a path that is unique to me. Why would I want to live any other way? Why would I want to walk down a path that has already been travelled by so many, where the outcomes are standard and predictable? Why should the reality of death be allowed to restrict the way I live life? How can the reality of death instead fuel us to live a life that we truly want? How can the truth about dying help us to be alive as freely as we want to be?
