It’s valentine’s day tomorrow – it’s the season of love! To celebrate love, and really get to the core of it, I’m taking a slightly different angle. I’m going to talk about Death, obviously! I did say last week that I wasn’t looking at the light and fluffy at the moment!
How does thinking about death make you feel? Not just your death, but that of those you love too. I mean, there’s no getting away from it, we’re definitely all going to die at some point.
I’m a big believer that regularly thinking, and talking, about death is a good thing. Many people will do absolutely anything to avoid the thought of death, it fills them with a sense of existential dread. I think that pushing death away, at all costs, really just stops us from enjoying life.
I USED TO BE WORRIED ABOUT DEATH.
More than worried, I was scared of it. I didn’t understand what it was all about, and it felt like something to fear. And that changed for me when I had an experience under hypnosis of the state between lives.
Of course, I have no way of knowing if that experience was real or imagined, and I don’t think that it really matters either way. It felt real to me at the time, and it made a positive change to the way that I think about and see death. I no longer fear it, in fact, when the right time comes, I quite look forward to it. And if it turns out my original thoughts of “we just die and return to nothing” is correct, well, I’ll not know the difference anyway, right? I might as well choose the believe that makes me feel good about it now.
But thinking about death is more than just being worried about what happens at that time. It’s about appreciating that our time here, and our time with the people we love is limited. It’s a reminder to strip back all that is unnecessary and make the most of the things that are truly important to us. This is one of the corner stones of Stoic Philosophy. Memento Mori. Remember you are mortal.
TIME IS A WASTING.
Tomorrow isn’t promised. So why are you spending your precious time and energy with people who make you feel crap, doing stuff you don’t care about and putting off your dreams? (That’s if you’ve even given yourself time to figure out what your dreams are of course. Many people haven’t. I’m only just figuring it out myself.)
Why put off dealing with your past issues? Why keep telling yourself that you are fine if you’re not?
I think we need death to appreciate love. Only having a limited amount of time here is what makes life special. Only having a limited time together is what makes relationships (of all kinds) special.
If how you’re spending that time at the moment doesn’t feel special to you – maybe it’s time to make a change.