Do you realize
That you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realize
We're floating in space?
Do you realize
That happiness makes you cry?
Do you realize
That everyone you know someday will die?
And instead of saying all of your good-byes
Let them know you realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round
The Flaming Lips, Do Ya Realise?
I knew that someday I was gonna die
And I knew before I died
Two things would happen to me
That number one: I would regret my entire life
And number two: I would want to live my life over again
President Lyndon B. Johnson talking after his exit from the Whitehouse (1968/1969)
“…Most psychotherapy patients (and probably most non-patients, since neurosis is the norm rather than the exception) have a problem, whether they are young or old, in facing the reality of death squarely and clearly… If we can live with the knowledge that death is our constant companion, travelling on our “left shoulder,” then death can become in the words of Don Juan, our “ally,” still fearsome but continually a source of wise counsel. With death’s counsel, the constant awareness of the limit of our time to live and love, we can always be guided to make the best use of our time and live life to the fullest. But if we are unwilling to fully face the fearsome presence of death on our left shoulder, we deprive ourselves of its counsel and cannot possibly live or love with clarity. When we shy away from death, the ever changing nature of things, we inevitably shy away from life.”
M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled.
"Everybody thinks about death sometimes... You ain't gonna be here forever. You gotta die someday -- that's gonna happen for sure. And whether you come back, I don't know. Some people say you come back; I dunno. I don't know nobody who's come back... And whether there's another world, we don't know. So just live for as long as you can, enjoy life, enjoy the pretty women in the world. Just live and let live. And love people. There's some good in everybody."
John Lee Hooker, Rolling Stone (May 28, 1998)
"The Way of the Samurai is found in death. Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, we should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightening, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand foot cliffs, dying of disease, or committing sepuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail, one should consider himself as dead. This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai."
Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai, read aloud by Forrest Whitaker in Ghost Dog
In your life you’re going to experience joy, growth and love. You’ll also experience suffering, decay and death. Everything will change, probably faster than you would wish for.
That effects everyone you know, too. People you’re used to having around won’t be there one day, and you rarely get to know when and how their presence will leave your life. Your belief systems may not even slightly prepare you for the sense of loss and grief you’ll feel.
But you can prepare yourself to avoid the remorse and guilt experienced by allowing a loved one to pass without addressing significant issues in your relationship. One of the things that was drummed into me time and again in my youth was never let the sun go down on your anger. You never know when you’ll last see someone you love, and so you need to act in a way that is loving at all times.
I’ve often found myself using my own version of the meditation quoted from Hagakure, and always found it directional rather than morbid. I guess it’s part of that whole shamanic complex of ideas that I found within myself - wanting to hang around graveyards and the like, my own initiation experience of being torn apart and remade, symbolically dying and being created anew - I found myself naturally considering my death before I realised the positive effects the practise had on me. It’s the practise of the awareness of death that makes us more aware of the limited time that we have to live and be happy, and the awareness can be extended to include everyone you know, because we’re all in the same boat. Which is why I consider meditation on death to be a technique that fosters greater compassion in us, both directed towards ourselves and other people.
There’s another technique you can use, which is writing your own eulogy. Fast forward to the end of your life and consider what you would like written about you by your family and friends, or what you would like your extended reputation to be.
Don’t really care if you think that’s all a cliché. It’s pretty universal, I reckon. |
