There was a time when I feared death. It takes away everything you have and it yanks you away from everything that you love. It takes you away from the only world you have ever known. Thoughts of being totally alone being buried in the ground forever just seems to be unfathomable for human endurance.

Of course, the religious and spiritual toy with the notion that our spirit will go on forever, but our fear of death still remains because none of us really know what is going to go on after we leave our bodies. It’s really the not knowing or the unknown that is feared since the only people that know what death is about are, in fact, dead.

I’ve only read of one person coming back and that was Jesus, but that was supposed to be to show us that there is life after death. He didn’t stick around, at least not so we could see him, so there must be something better than sticking around here after death. There is reincarnation but apparently we come back with no conscious memory of our previous life, so it’s not like we can go look up our partners and renew what we had lost.I try to look at death like it’s a natural thing.

In other words, it is going to happen. I’m going to die. I may go kicking and screaming, but it is going to happen. I’ve been in the position where I thought I was going to die a few times and every time I wanted to live above all else. My spirit wasn’t fighting to get out it was trying to stay intact. I flipped a car upside down in a body of water once, and I’ll tell you, I felt death tapping on my shoulder.

Death was trying to get my attention and I wasn’t interested in giving it to him. Our bodies fight to survive. Our bodies have appetites, sexual urges, and instincts of survival all geared naturally to keep us going as long as possible even if we remain only as genes in the next generation.I now use the fear of death as a tool as to how I live.

If I know I’m going to die at any moment then all the pettiness of human interactions transforms into a temporary situation that will soon be resolved. Knowing that life is a temporary situation, anything that happens in life is also a temporary situation. This gives me a perspective of when the situation is good I enjoy it to the fullest, drinking in every moment knowing it might be the last time I ever taste the sweet love of life.

On the flip side of the coin is the bad situation. Knowing that a bad situation is also temporary then I know that my situation will eventually change for the better, or at least end.I do believe that I have a spirit that lives on. Even science has to admit that upon death we lose a common weight. I forget the exact weight but it is always the same for all of us.

They have also found that energy can’t be destroyed. It can only transform. What we transform into is anyone’s guess. I don’t know, that’s for sure, and the fact that I don’t know makes me hesitant to die.I don’t have the desire to cling to life as someone at the mercy of our medical profession. Just because my heart is beating doesn’t make me alive. When I say I want to live, I don’t include being on a bed with tubes stuck in me. I haven’t made a living will yet but believe me I will.

I don’t want to bring anyone down talking about death, but I try not to look at it as a negative thing.When someone I love dies, I try to look at it as they get to go on a nice vacation and I have to stay here at work. It’s still sad and I mourn their loss, but I also feel good for them. I don’t take it that they have been unfairly yanked from this world;

I take it that they get to go somewhere really special and someday they will greet me when I make the journey. Death should be neither positive nor negative. It just is, like birth, puberty, giving birth, slowing down, getting old, or losing hair. If you look at death objectively, it’s really just part of living. I don’t want to go to the dentist either, but I do. If you take care of your life like you take care of your teeth, then the trip to the dentist isn’t nearly as bad.

Comments