Remembering Death!
I woke up early in the morning, scrolled through social media, and prepared myself for my work, and thus done and dusted with the day. But something strange happened here that shook me, as if something, emerging from the heavens, grabbed me by the arm, and had me envision death; me dead, everyone dead, nobody left. FLASHES!
I wasn’t ready for this, though. Neither imagined nor thought about it before, folks! The journey of life, however, was squeezed down to a matter of seconds this time. Imagine a tick of a clock, and I was gone, leaving behind nothing but my petrified body to be buried. Immobile me, with whatever I have done in my life being discussed by those who themselves are subjected to the same process. My post-death hustle and bustle among people weeping and meditating on the certainty of death, and how they all forgot the same days or a month or a year later.
Day-to-day human frenzy, friends, about getting ahead of the race boiled down to a useless exercise. We are more attracted to the hollow feeling of being respected than respecting the lesser mortals. We are often inclined to relish in creating a situation in which we are best described as more fitting than others. Monetary disputes, altercations over generational wealth, and acrimony over trivial matters stand nothing in the face of a thing as unpredictable as death. We are terrorized and flattened by nothing, as Bukowski once said.
The complication that remains is why we keep forgetting death. Is it that we are death-averse, or are we so fascinated about life that we push this rudimentary fact under a carpet? Human fascination often turns devilish every now and then; we are attracted to a beautiful flower and pluck it, depriving it of its life. What’s a better way to keep a check on unnecessary human desires than reminding ourselves of our ultimate reality that keeps no fixed time to come?
The utility in this ideal-death exercise is not to depress us but to awaken us from deep slumber. To align our thoughts, much less actions, with the thought of our ephemeral life. This is not to turn nihilistic and declare life to be meaningless. Your one act of kindness might be a thousand blessings for others. This gives meaning to life. The point is whether you’re kind or not irrespective of contexts. What you do defines you, irrespective of whether you’re living or have died.
How beautiful the world would be if we lived this way! Without priding ourselves on our every goddamn thing, but by moderating ourselves.
The moment I confronted mortality, it was horrific and humbling at the same time! And it was the purest feeling I have ever felt.