Why glorify death? I would much rather glorify life.

Lately, I have been coming across quite alot of people writing about suicides and death (not in a morbid way) but strangely as a celebration. Seeing it as a act of beauty, the ultimate act of reaffirmation of the possibility of living and as a choice. I don't know, maybe I'm unromantic, and old school, but I'll never agree. i am sure that out there somewhere are people who choose to end their lives by choice, or choose to see it as beautiful. But everytime i read these viewpoints, this Chinese phrase always pops up, I don't know where it came from, maybe a movie I 've seen, or something I've read, or maybe it is something I believe so much in that it just automatically wells up from inside. "活着,比世界上任何东西都要好."

I don't know how have we gotten to a state when we have taken everything so for granted that even being alive seems like a natural given. It is a boredom to be a alive, death is more exciting. Perhaps. But I am grateful for being alive. I don't know why I have the sudden urge to reaffrim this to myself. Maybe I'm afraid I will forget (becasue sometimes I do)about how wonderful it is to just be alive. Sometimes, I have lunch with friends who are Chirstians or catholics, and I see them saying grace before their meals. I think it is beautiful, (if)when they mean it, to eat with gratitude. In the same way, I don't understand how is it that so many of us now no longer live with gratitude. Live with thanks giving. Is it because we feel so safe? so far from death? Or is it because we have the illusion of having control, or is it simply ungratefulness on our part. Afterall, we have never experienced war, or much suffering. Because it amazes me, how people in times of war, famine, still hold on to their lives. Not really only out of fear of death, i don't think fear of death is the cause. But I feel that that fear stems from loving life. I don't know why we have all gone so numb from living that not-living becomes beautiful.

Does it take a war, a death, a close shave to remind us that being alive is a gift? Maybe I sound like some preachy social worker dissuading some suicidal teen, but I genuinely believe in it. And I hope I won't forget it along the way. Maybe it is because most of us don't think our existence is anything really special. Afterall, we are not all Shakespeare, but maybe we always forget it is a miracle we can even know of this life, this place, this time, this existence, this moment. Really, "Thank God I'm alive."