Yesterday, I shared this Tweet.
It was no accident, not least because I’d be listening to Die Wise on the way to work and (once again) heard Jenkinson make this statement.
And not for the first time, it made me think deeply about my own life and/or death expectation, no doubt influenced by the cultural malaise that I continue to wrestle with.
Think about it.
We hear lots of talk about living up to our potential, being all we can be and making the most of our life but rarely, if at all, does anyone talk about endings until we get there — i.e. to the end of our life.
Should we?
I think so but of course that’s in opposition to the ‘living a full life’ et al. that fills the airwaves, which now has the hue of a god-given right. As in, if we don’t live to 85 or beyond, well, we must have done something wrong; namely, not exercised enough, or eaten enough broccoli etc. or fallen foul of some holier-than-thou statement about how we should be living out our days.
I’ve tried to raise this subject with a few people and you can tell by the lack of interest and/or indifference that no one wants to contemplate endings of any kind. Sure, we talk about the workings of the body and the mind and the fact that they’re in decline but not death — not that subject; how bloody awful.
I don’t know what past generations were like but I do know that death came a lot earlier and absent high-tech healthcare there didn’t exist the expectation that every medical condition could successfully be treated. In that space, and not that I’m advocating for a white-knuckle, pain-ridden fight but there was such a thing as a natural death and not something where, as I’ve witnessed, the person more likely died by dint of the meds (diamorphine) than they did the disease.
And my point?
Well, all I’m advocating for is a much more open and considered conversation about the meaning of life informed by the fact that there’s no guarantee — or none that I know of — that when we go to sleep, we’ll awake the following day.
Heavy stuff for sure but as worthwhile as any other subject I can think of right now.
Blessings,
Julian
Some thoughts sparked by your post:
I hadn't come across Stephen Jenkinson before - thanks for that mention. Lots to dive into there.
I talk about endings in the Essence Map, as in those pivotal moments that arise from loss, love and life, and change. For me, they're all precursors to the ultimate ending. I think they're designed to prepare us, and peel back the layers to the truth of who we are. I can only speculate but my version of death is the peeling back of all the layers so that we really see who we are, at a soul level. That's what I see as 'living up to our potential, being all we can be', too.
“Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you´re alive it isn't.”
― Richard Bach
In my personal experiences of death, conventional medicine focuses on quantity rather than quality of life. I think this approach has skewed our ideas about the meaning of life.
There's this too: The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. Mark Twain