A meditation on D*****

I just read one of my friend's blog. Well she's my sec school friend, she is now working as a nurse. And I think she sees alot of life and death (quite literally). I do admire her strength, I've always felt that her occupation is no easy job. One has to be tough spiritually, physically and mentally. And her meditation on death through one of the patients who crossed her path was quite touching, it triggered alot of thoughts on her part.

I don't know, for me. I find it strange that all the most inspiring entries about death are almost always meditations on life. I guess it is true afterall that whatever kind of life you lead determines the kind of death you die and vice versa. It is never ever just about death itself. Death, the unspoken word, the silent fear, that we all try to ignore, but which is always near us. I have watched, read plenty of stuff dealing with life and death. Nothing. Has ever been satisfying, maybe because death is always just out of the reach of our understanding until our own time comes. Or maybe because, in every thing that has ever dealt with this topic, there had been this fear in its very core. Or perhaps, it is the very fact we spend our entire life trying to make sense of the world and then we have to die. Die without understanding death itself. Maybe that is why death is such a hard philosophical nut to crack. Religion, philosophy, almost everything tries to tackle this and never quite succeeeds.

It is not a fear that is conscious. Maybe some part of us just rejects the fact that one day we will not exist, and maybe everything we have ever achieved does not really mean much ultimately. Maybe it is also because, we are never ever one coherent being, we are always so divided. Our animal instincts which clings desperately to life, which will struggle to keep breathing. And our spirituality that tells us to let go and gives us hope to something better beyond life.

From the Bible to great philosophers' works, this fear of death is written in invisible ink in almost every page. Of course, the bible offers something that will comfort believers from this eventual fate of all mankind, but it is there. It is something we do not want to look in the face, because we are afraid. And because it hurts. It hurts to admit that so much of our life, of everything that we've built is founded from this very basic fear of death. And again, this fear is not conscious. It is not something we are always aware of, but this fear is real.

I'm not posing as someone who's figured it all out. Come on, very few people do. Maybe an occassional Buddha, Gandhi, Jesus, Mohammad throughout the course of history. But for most of us common folks,we struggle. Perhaps it is better to admit that we really don't understand. A lot of books and various people will try to tell you what is in store for you in death and after. But the truth is that no one really really really knows. And that's the part that really hurts. you can pin all your hope on a single theory, heaven, reincarnation whatever.. You can spend your whole life hoping, but you won't know it until it happens and then you don't exist. that's the cruel irony of it all. But still, I'm not so thick as to claim that nothing ever matters if that is truly the case. Things still do. Living, right now, this second. It matters. (at least to me) Maybe at the end of the day, it is living well and living fully that matters even if we still don't understand. Perhaps, what's really important is not what happens after death, but before. Maybe it is a bit silly to let death colour our whole perspective on life. But ultimately, the answer is for everyone of us to find on our own.

To end off, I'll just share the most inspiring take on death I've ever come across. It is beautiful as it is simple. (in my opinion, as always) It is from J.M Barrie's Peter Pan


"Peter was not quite like the other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremor ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, Peter felt just one. next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, " To die will be an awfully big adventure."