What do you intend doing with it?

Death comes to all of us.  We like to deny that.  We think that someone’s careless diet, inappropriate drug use, excess of alcohol consumption, unfortunate genetic inheritance was at fault.  Sloppy life choices are blamed as if avoiding death was as simple as choosing not to engage in dangerous sports.  Why do we love to point the finger?  “Well he was a worrier, that lowers your immune system.” Or “The stress levels he had to deal with this past year, must have weakened him.”  It is natural, I suspect, to want to blame something/someone for the indigestible truth that death happens.

Suicide is referred to, at times, as if the victim has committed a frontal attack on society.    Deserving thus of stigma, shame, castigation.  I prefer the recent definition of suicide “it is when living is not longer a viable option.”  If the victims felt they had any other choice it’s probable they would have taken it. Robin Williams will be missed, a great talent, deserving of respect and much loved by so many.

Why does it suits us to point the finger at those who die.

1.      By blaming the person death becomes no longer relevant to us

2.      We can distance our own death by allocating a reason/fault we do not intend making

3.      Our own perceived immortality is back in our own hands

4.      Such attitudes allow us to proclaim, it had nothing to do with me, it is their fault

5.      The meaningless practices of our own lives seem suddenly life sustaining

6.      Our own death becomes not the full stop at the end of every life sentence but more like a comma one can insert or leave out at will

In the context of physical life being all there is, dying is the cruel end game we choose not to contemplate.  Those who die around us remind us, all too clearly, death is the ultimate destination.  If we are prepared to consider death at all, how should we think of this dying business?

 We should look forward to it, as one looks forward to reaching the final destination of a long journey.  While on earth we are like a bird in a cage.  Restricted, caged, imprisoned in a physical space.  Death breaks that cage and frees the soul

I like to think that every good deed, spiritual quality of kindness, charity, love creates a spiritual seedling in the next life.  Just as the baby in the womb has legs, arms, eyes which it develops in preparation for world outside.  So to we must progress so that the spiritual attributes required are in place.  We cannot see our seedling but we can, here on earth, prepare the soil, tend the fragile seed and water it with prayers and supplications while on this earthly plain.

Our destiny is to create noble fruits.  Our endeavours in this mortal life will either nurture that tree of our real existence or become a veil between us and our own heart.  Selfishness, meanness of spirit, jealously, hurtfulness, spitefulness, materialism, disunity, cruelty etc – all these deform our development and stunt our growth.

If we deny the purpose of our lives we lose the light.  In the dark every path looks the same.  Each one as pointless as all the others.  Choosing to turn to God, is as nurturing as the sun is to the flower.  In choosing the light, we are replenished daily.

The mistakes we all make become tests that we learn from.  Rather than focus on the faults of others we address instead the meaty issue of our own defects.  Removing the beam from our own eye has always been the priority.

Our approaching death, that full stop at the end of this life, our physical disintegration should bred an urgency, not an indifference or apathy.  If, we admit it is there, then we can focus on the really important issue remaining.  What do you intend doing with the hours, days, weeks, years that that lie ahead?

Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Remembering one we lost this week - missing your smiling face and laughter