Nature’s Highlights:

This week nature has gifted me with something gorgeous, and I want you to share the feeling of awe with me:

Every one of us, in our short, simple lives has but 2 certainties:

• Birth

• Death

One of them we decide to celebrate every year of our lives,

Through what we call birthdays.

We’re quick to be joyful about how we’ve accumulated another 365 days under our belt,

How we’ve managed to survive for just another year.

But the other?

We treat it like a plague,

Like something that shouldn’t exist.

We even try to get rid of it, to make it disappear.

Humans have existed for 300.000 years,

And yet we’re still frightened at the thought of dying,

The only natural thing beyond birth.

I was talking to my sister a few weeks ago,

And the subject of mom’s (our only parent left) death appeared in the conversation.

I could start feeling the trembling in her voice,

Feeling the fear that was so quickly embellishing her.

She wasn’t even afraid of her getting ill,

She was afraid of her growing older and eventually…dying of old age.

Every single person we have on this earth,

Every single family member,

Every single friend,

Is just something we have borrowed from the Earth/the Universe/God etc.

Something that, with 100% certainty, we’re gonna have to return.

Nothing in life is truly ours.

No matter how many material possessions you ‘have’, they do not belong to you.

The only thing that is at least a little yours is yourself -

Your perspective

Your thoughts

Your actions -

But even these perish and fade quickly compared to the vastity of life,

Because, like everything else, you have borrowed the form you possess as well.

It was never yours to begin with.

You were given everything you now call yourself,

And yet you’re still afraid to give this ‘everything’ back.

I have experienced a lot of deaths around me ever since I was 5 years old, when my aunt died.

By the time I was 16, I had buried 6 of my family members.

With the other 2 (my grandpa and grandma) being dead before even arriving here.

You could say death has taken almost everything from me,

But yet again, how could it,

When it was never mine?

In my eyes, death has given me everything.

And not just me, but all of us as well.

It has given us meaning. It has given us our lives.

The stoics talk about death through the perspective of ‘memento mori’,

Or ‘remember your death’ - ‘remember that you are mortal’.

For them, death wasn’t a thing to be scared of or sad about,

It was the thing that incited every one of their actions,

The thing that made them appreciate the beauty of the now.

Their thinking got me through the depths of sadness I found myself in for years,

And they gave me a new way of living,

A new way of dying.

Without death, nothing would even matter.

Even from an evolutionary standpoint,

If we could never die, our worth on this planet would cease to exist.

Our lives have meaning exactly because we’re just passing through them.

Without death, we could never appreciate life.

Without death, we would have everything.

But what good is everything when nothing has any meaning?

It’s the urgency of death that makes you love your family more.

It’s the urgency of death that makes you rush out into this world.

It’s the urgency of death that gives you everything you could ever ask for:

- Meaning -

So, I ask you this again.

Why fear death?

Because of the unknown?

This is yet again a reason why I love death so much.

I’m terribly curious to see what’s behind it.

Take it like this:

If there is nothing beyond death, then you would feel the exact same way you did before you were born.

If any religion is correct, though, you will live a life a million times better than the one you have on this earth.

Aren’t you at least curious to see what this life could mean?

Death is a bargain that you can’t lose.

You either go into the same state you were in before birth,

Or you experience a life so delightful you’ll have a hard time even remembering this one.

Death, like any other thing in this world, is a double-edged sword.

For some, it provides a more fulfilling way to live life.

But most are only paralyzed by it, being so scared of death that they forget how to truly live.

It’s the same with suffering and joy.

If you don’t fully accept one,

You’ll never be able to enjoy the other.

People are afraid of suffering, of being hurt, of being disappointed;

So they refuse everything that could prove to bring them joy.

They refuse truly loving.

They refuse truly giving it their all.

We suffer more in our attempt to escape death and suffering,

Than in fully accepting them into our lives.

The more you run from what you fear,

The more you fear what you run from.

Funniest thing? No one can break this cycle…other than you, of course.

To sum it all up:

What is a life without death,

And what is one where just the thought of it makes you unable to live?

It’s said a human has 2 lives.

The second one starts when he realizes he has only one.

So when do you plan on finally starting yours?

Death isn’t something to be feared and frowned upon.

But something to be remembered and accepted.

Memento mori.