Living

“I believe in Dead and in Living. I don’t believe in Dying.” – Terri

I have paraphrased that quote. I’m not entirely certain if that is the exact wording, but it’s the jist of what she meant. Until you are dead, you are still alive. There is no in-between state “dying”. And if you are living as though you are “dying”, then you are doing a pretty poor job of living. For as long as you are still alive, there is still something for you to do or to be, because you don’t have to do all the time. Sometimes, you need to be without doing. Call it meditation, letting go, letting be, or simply enjoying the day on a lazy summer hammock, there is importance in being. So, even if you are confined to bed, can’t move your arms, get too tired to stand for more than a minute, you can still Live. You can still Be, which is an important part of Living.

When you are Dying, you are focusing not on your life but on your death. Well, there’s not a whole lot you can do about your death. You can do your best to prevent it in certain situations like fighting back against an attacker or driving carefully on a slick road or simply not drinking the poison beneath the kitchen sink. You can do your best to promote it in other situations like taking a gun and shooting your head or driving drunk during a blizzard or smoking when you’re on an oxygen tank. But in each of these situations, you have control only over part of your death, not all of it. There are no actions you can take or not take to guarantee that you will die or not die. If you fight back when someone is attacking you, you increase the odds that you will live, but never to 100%. If you shoot yourself in the head, you will increase the odds that you will die, but never to 100%. There are people who have been shot in the head and still lived. A good number ended up in a coma, but they lived. No matter what you do, you cannot control completely and finally when and how you will Die. And no matter what you do, you cannot control completely and finally how you will Live. But the choices you make will affect the odds.

Live and Die soon, but first Dying. When you are Dying, you are focusing on your impending Death more so than everyone else around you. They, too, will die, but that’s not the focus of their lives, hence they are not Dying. But you, you would rather pay attention to your Death than to your Life. Why? Why would you do this? Make the funeral arrangements, prepare a will, give away those things that you want others to have, and do whatever else that needs to be done, but then stop! Prepare, and then stop. You do not have to focus your entire Life, however much of it remains, on your Death. There is too much else to do. Too much Dying is whining and complaining. Yes, you hurt, but do you also love? Do you state, “I love you” as often as you state, “I hurt so much”? Or are your words focused on the pain you have? Do you focus on what you won’t get to do rather than reminisce about what you have done? Do you lament and cry about how you won’t see certain people any more rather than enjoy them while they are still there? If you don’t enjoy them when they visit you, then why complain about not being able to see them again? You’re like the miser who buried his gold in the garden and went out every night to look at it. Thieves took it, and he cried and lamented, but a wise man passing by said, “Take a rock and bury it there. It will do you as much good as the gold did.” What he meant was use what time, energy, and resources you have rather than hoarding them or squandering them. If you don’t use your time to Live, then what’s the point? Why are you Dying, when there is still Life to be had?

Death is a mystery because we don’t know what’s on the other side. There are those who have come back from being brain dead for a short period of time, and they have interesting stories, but were they truly at final Death? And what was beyond what they said, if anything? And what about the other people who were brain dead for a short period of time, also lived, and yet didn’t have a “near-death” experience? Or at least one they can remember? Perhaps the blankness that they have in their memories is what will happen to them when they die – oblivion. Not a cheery thought, eh? But there are very few people on this earth who are certain about what happens after they die. If you believe there will be a judgment, then conduct your life in such a way as it turns out how you want. Otherwise, there’s not a whole lot you can do about Death and what comes after it. Let’s move on to something that we can do and be something about.

Life and Living are about two things – doing and being. There’s a t-shirt saying about two philosophers and Frank Sinatra. One philosopher said, “To do is to be.” Another philosopher said, “To be is to do.” Frank Sinatra said, “Do be do be do.” In my opinion, Sinatra got it right, even if that isn’t what he meant. Sometimes we try to outrun the way things are, the way we feel, what we think by doing. We try to use physical action to overcome emotional or mental activity. We distract ourselves with doing. But the way things are, the way we feel, and the things we think don’t go away. To get them to go away, you must first face them and acknowledge them. You must think the thoughts and feel the emotions and face the reality of what is. You don’t have to obsess over them, but you don’t get to hide from them. It’s like a really dusty closet, and doing is the door. As long as you do, you keep the door closed, and you don’t have to face the closet. This does not get the closet cleaned, however, nor does it make the closet not exist. You have to open the door (by no longer doing) and clean out the closet (by feeling, thinking, facing). But, don’t obsess. Just give it a good dusting and sweep the floor. Don’t paint it and haul out the shelf paper and buy all new padded hangars or a new shelving unit. Clean out the closet and stop. Feel, think, face, and stop. Will you have to feel, think, face these same things again? Probably. I have regrets from eighth grade that still blindside me every once in a while (thus proving that it is a whole lot easier for me to write this than to follow my own advice, but believe me, I have been feeling/thinking/facing a whole lot more lately than in the previous portion of my life, and things are working a whole lot better now). Your closet will get dusty again (as will mine). At that point, feel, think, and face. Don’t distract. And then move on. Go back to what you were doing before or something else if you have a different preference. Be fully with what you feel, think, and are, and let it be.

Being, however, does not encompass the entirety of life. There are things that need to be done. Sometimes, there are parts of your reality that you want to or need to change. First, be enough to face the portion of reality that you don’t like. Then, do enough to alter the reality into what you want it to be. Sometimes, what you want isn’t what’s best for you, and once you’ve done your way into a new reality, you may have to face it that you’ll need to figure out something else to do. In that case, try being with your reality and your wants and needs for a little longer than you were the previous time and see what truly appeals to you. This works with mundane things, too. You can accept the reality that your spouse or children did not do the dishes, but until you do something about that reality, the dishes won’t get done. Be, so you can see what needs to be done, then do to create a reality you truly want. In this way, you can give birth to a Future that is of your conscious choice, that truly reflects you.