Use Your Death Well

October 31, 2012

It scares me, posting this image. Because of the expected outraged response? Because I bravely poked my finger into an eye of a taboo and now brace myself for the upcoming criticism and condemnation? No, not quite. And no, not because I  am beyond such trivial matters as the opinions of others, not because I “really don’t care what others think of me”. No, I do care. But I do not delude myself -the criticism will likely not come because  likely no one will read this.

But I babble. I babble, because I am scared. I am scared because I am poking a finger into an eye of my own taboo. A few of them, in fact.

Yes, I would like to believe myself completely present and fully aware of the nature of death. I would like to believe myself at peace with it’s prospect. I would like to see myself grown beyond the delusion of death being the end of me. I would like to believe all those things and yet here I am, scared.

Because right here, right within me there is the old belief that death is an end. The end of me, the end of life, the end of everything. Because, accompanying it, there is the notion that death is a tragedy. And then there is the taboo, the prohibition, the unbreakable rule: death is not to be talked about. Death is not to be mentioned in anything other than the most respectful and mortified of whispers and, above all, death will not be enjoyed!

And so here I am, with my finger rooted firmly right in the middle of my taboos, sending ribbons of fear shooting up my spine and knotting around my belly.

And yet, and even so, what sends a shock of real terror straight into my chest, right through my heart, is the thought of there never being any death at all.

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