Four times, I've been involved in an event that had a chance to end my life.
Once, during a perilous landing on an otherwise ho-hum airplane flight. Once, in a car wreck. Once, when I collapsed climbing out of my hospital bed following surgery. Once, three weeks ago, when my internal defibrillator fired an electrical shock designed to reset my heart rate to normal levels.
But in none of those cases did I find myself sad, darkly reflective, excited, suddenly penitent, or even regretful. Instead, I was strangely calm. Unworried. If anything, curious. Slightly expectant, maybe. Even a few days or weeks after each event, I did not find myself examining my life for improvements I could make, now that I'd dodged the Grim Reaper again. I did not cope with the aftermath by making new resolutions to live life to the fullest, to cherish each day as a blessing, to soak up idyllic family moments...
Don't get me wrong. I have no death wish. I want to see my boys grow up and start families of my own. I want my (presently unwrinkly) wrinkly wife to receive the unparalleled privilege of changing my big-boy diaper, several times at least. I want to eventually not be carded for wine purchases. (You laugh, but I had to break out the ID tonight again.)
Surely you've gathered by now that I'm not going anywhere political with this one. Unless you consider the afterlife political.
Welcome to Heaven
(a subsidiary of God, LLC)
- Green Party members only* -
All others KEEP OUT
*some restrictions apply
The idea you can secure a happier, more comfy, more pleasant, less fire-slash-brimstone-heavy residence to hang out in after you buy the farm, based on your lifetime performance, that idea is nonsensical to me. To imply that we have any control over whatever part of us survives this body... that just screams "delusional" to me. I intend no offense. I just don't get it anymore.
Granted, something's going to happen after my last breath. Not only can I not really picture what that might be, I can't even picture if I will be able to experience it at all, let alone as "myself," whatever that means.
Some of you have close relatives who've died. Moms, dads, siblings, maybe even kids. That's bound to color your idea of the afterlife. I confess I've had no such experience. Which makes me no expert. Let me defer, then, to people smarter than me.
"Since life and death are each other's companions, why worry about them? All beings are one."
"The true men of old did not know what it was to love life or to hate death. They did not rejoice in birth, nor strive to put off dissolution. Unconcerned they came and unconcerned they went. That was all. They did not forget whence it was they had sprung, neither did they seek to inquire their return thither."
Both quotations are from the Chuang Tzu, another "scripture" of Taoism thought purportedly collected by a thinker of the same name. Both passages are instructing the same thing: Live life and let the afterlife sort itself out. You're not exactly in charge of it anyway.
You can argue whether this is comforting or disquieting. To me, it just rings true.
I agree with you. None of us has any idea what death means. We won't know until it happens to us and we might not even know then. We may never know.
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