If it were up to you, would you choose to be immortal? Live forever?
As you can imagine, when death takes someone close to us, be it a friend or loved one, it leaves us with questions about our own mortality, What is the purpose of life or the point of suffering? Why is there futility in the face of it? Death also leaves us with our thoughts, wondering how we will die, wishing we could change parts of the past, and most of all, wanting more time in the future.
More time to heal. To make things right. To understand. For technology to catch up so loved ones don’t have to slip from our embrace because there wasn’t anything more that could be done for them. More time so we can feel at peace with our lives, ourselves and loved ones.
The way it happens currently, it feels like someone keeps pulling the rug from under our feet over and over again. We pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off every time, except when it is our turn.
I’m not down with that. Every fibre of my body rejects death and how it occurs in our species, our culture and in our lives. Either we fear it or we attempt to make it more palatable by applying tried and tested aphorisms.
I don’t fear or hate death because I know it isn’t the end of us but what I do mind is the thief in the night nature of it.
A few weeks before my father died I said to him;” Dad, I know you are feeling tired but I am sure there are many things we can do to resolve the health issues you are facing. You don’t have to go. We can make it through this.”
I got busy researching pathways through the maze of health issues with my siblings. Each one of us digging deeper, listening, being gentle with our father.
We didn’t realize death was in stealth mode and already there but we soon fell in step with its timetable.
The time before a person dies, from the moment they learn they are ill until after they have gone, is the greatest struggle for me. I can’t balance the accounts so easily ie shuttling between wanting them to get well, to not suffering to finally,“They are in a better place now”. That time or experience I would like to see changed.
______________
I imagine a world, where people choose whether to live or die. A life where there is no oppression, hunger, or brutality. A world where we get to experience the joy of life. A life where we are raised to know when our time is complete and we can surrender our bodies without fear.
That world is growing in me. It is growing in you. I think of it as future memory. It exists as possibilities and dreams within us and our children. It will exist as reality for future generations. We are the roots from which immortality grows new branches.
______________
As I follow my thoughts on immortality, I am led to this knowing: we are immortal already but we don’t recognize ourselves. We are born from exploding stars, we have been bacteria, lived in the oceans, grown eyes, limbs, and became self-aware. Here we are now talking about death and more.
More time.
More life.
More..