Seek the Fun in Gloomy Doom

Seek the Fun in Gloomy Doom

The thought of hitting the end of the road struck me lately. Sooner or later I am dead. There is a taste of loneliness prevailing the feeling that someday everything will be gone. In a blink of an eye, like a puff of smoke, everything that I possess will cease to be mine. The passion of living will come to an end. The ultimate endgame would soon swallow me whole.

Mr. Death never needs my permission. He comes when he comes. My time is up when my time is up. But I hope he comes to me swiftly.  I am not really afraid of death. Dying is what makes me hesitant to give-in even in my imagination. That is why I really hope death comes to me quick. 

Carl Jung on his pioneering works in psychology had emphasized the importance of understanding the Shadow. He said that one can never understand the Substance as long as one denies the counterpart of it which he called the Shadow. These two opposites go together all the time, so as life and death. One embraces life, one embraces death also.

Most would feel Death as a foe, an uncompromising foe. No one can give excuses like when one wants to postpone an appointment with a peer. Death keeps his schedule rigid and unalterable. When time is up, time is up.

Dissolution is what one is afraid of. No one wants to be separated from what they've conditioned to enjoy. Family, daughters and sons, wife, lovers, friends, job, social status, power, riches, beauty, sex, and orgasm. Everyone fears to cease existing, afraid of halting the palpable human existence. Death is to be avoided at all cost. Obviously, it is impossible.

Running away from death is futile. Humans knew it. But they develop the culture of trying to stop death from coming. But there is a lifetime of opportunity to understand what death is. If one comes to an understanding that death is no more than just like the moment before one is born, the fear would dissolve slowly. What remains is the joy of living the current moment and a relaxing feeling going on with the flow.

Death is never been a problem. The way people deal with it is.

The Glamour of Death

The Glamour of Death

Death is like the moment before you were born.

Since we are still alive, talking about death always comes from a biased point of view. That's one of the greatest mysteries. We really like talking about things we don't have any experience at all. Like death. We can only make unending one-sided assumptions about it. But since we can agree that death is the ceasing of the moment and never to come back again we can manage to have the joy of discussing it in this term.

"I am afraid to die" is an honest statement; it is as noble as it could be if spoken with utmost reverence to the truth of this ultimate end-game.

Death is humbling. Death is always lurking. It comes always on a single blow and everything disappears. Death comes without convincing. Death arrives in the helpless face of withdrawal. Death takes everyone without warning.

This is the truth: that all that has ever lived has died and all that's living will going to die. Yes, we don't hear a lot of people talking about it like when they do talking about that disgusting neighbor of them. Nor we hear people taking this subject as a worthy pass-time as opposed to lively chat taking place in a night over a flood of wine. Oh, that dress is awesome. The gourmet tastes so good. And during these moments, when mind indulges so much of what it has been desiring for, the moment of ecstatic living runs in the veins like a fire that never runs out of good flame. But soon the flame dies. And when it does, the mind runs to every place and to every corner to look for the burning flame of living again and again all the while refusing to carry all along what lies beneath.

Or maybe, Death is extremely serious stuff you don't talk about in a party. In fact, this is the exact reason why people avoided engaging about it. Or at least subconsciously they do avoid to deal with it. The fact is enormously compelling that death itself is overwhelmingly convincing the mind to reject it outright most of the time.

There is something beyond death (or at least it is imagined to be so). But what's beyond is a complete mystery; a bizarrely unknown realm the mind can't comprehend. And that is why humans are afraid of death. There might be a blood-sucking monster out there. Or a fiery place of unending flesh grilling or a whole new world made-up of oven and toaster.

It happens that society is aimed at cultivating a culture, a mentality, trying to avoid death. Living as long as anyone can is the norm. And the norm is so naturally so for almost everyone that bringing out the topic of death comes like a rain in the Sahara Desert. Vanity, power, money or social status is what occupies human mind most of the time. The cultivation is veered towards keeping and seeking what is taught and thought to be important.

Of course everything comes to end. All end in the box with feet leveled for those who are quite lucky. But understanding that Death is not as horribly murky as it is registered in the mind is a good start. It is the better-half of Living. This is a critical acceptance. Well-being starts here. Can never start anywhere else. The late British Philosopher Allan Watts famously said that death is like a manure. As a manure fertilizes plants, the contemplation on death brings a fruitful  living.

We struggle to keep everything intact. We go out to our daily lives always looking for something to complete our senses. We look for everything except death (naturally it is so). But this is the paradox we refuse to accept. That no matter what, at the end of the day, the most we could end up to is the thing we always run away from. However, either we refuse or not, doesn't really matter. It will not change the end-game.

Oh boy, when the sun set down...a whole new life begins. Death is like the moment before you were born.