“People die the way they live, mostly. That could be grim, or it could be, in a quiet and unexpected way, great news. It means that you can begin to learn how to die well long before your turn comes. It means you can practice it in all the mundane corners of daily life. It means there’s nothing to wait for.” – Stephen Jenkinson, Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul
If my wife reads this post, she’ll think it's unseasonably grim.
And she’ll give me that look which suggests: “He’s at it again”.
But neither inclination is a reason – sufficient or otherwise – not to explore the way we are with death, be that ours or anyone else we know or will know.
If you look into Mr Jenkinson’s quote, you’ll see ‘death phobia’ writ large. It means for most people being told they’re dying is ‘news’, even though there’s a general flotsam and jetsam sense that we begin to die the moment we’re born; I don’t believe that anyone truly believes that.
The other motif is the fact that even if, in a moment of blind faith, we accept that we’re going to die or are dying, the automatic, knee-jerk reaction is to assume we’ve got to get busy living for otherwise we’ll have wasted our one and oh so precious life. But that modus operandi never lasts unless that is you revert to (for example) your Bucket List and begin the benign attempt to cross one thing and then another off your very ordinary list.
Again, I think these attempts to grasp death strangles it and elides the need to stop running long enough to ask yourself the question:
“What does it mean to die wise?”
Perhaps one way to think about this is to consider our relationship to time. Largely but not exclusively we think we’ve got more of it and never stop to wonder what it might mean to go to sleep without the certainty and conviction that we’ll reawaken the next day. And before you start sighing or wagging your finger in my direction, I don’t think this a morose canticle or an arbitrary way to see life and death but a more profound way to accept that nothing lasts and whilst the stats might be in our favour, that only relates to the generality of the population and not us.
Even if this doesn’t float your boat, you could do worse than start to talk about death – your death. How do you or should you die? No, not at the end but what relationship should you have with death – day by day?
For me, one of things that having had a few near misses means is that I stand in awe of each moment knowing that even the simple, ordinary things will one day evaporate and they’ll be no one here to live, breathe and love that which was once my life. I’ll admit this sense of awe and wonder is easily lost but looking out among the trees of my locus or the birds or any part of the wild, I’m brought back into that beautiful, heart-filled space and it reminds me not to take everything so damn seriously.
The thing is, I know that these sort of pith posts simply won’t do when it comes to such a vast and uncompromising subject. That’s fine. No, really. If I’m trying to do anything it’s to pray in the aid the idea that death isn’t something to be avoided at all cost and the sooner we bring it back into our lives, the more likely it is we’ll have a more in-depth view of our Anthropocentric leaning towards mother earth. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
Anyhow, it’s eyes down and off we go again. Another Monday in the legal trenches where I’ll be required once more to head off into the somnambulist world of commerce, i.e. money making.
Take care.
Love, Julian
Photo by Eduardo Drapier on Unsplash
Hi Julian, it’s good to read your crafted thoughts. I take it as a welcome reminder to be minded about such things. I’m particularly struck by the part of you point out - that we can begin to tend to how we die by how we are living right now.