“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” – Emily Dickinson
“It is not length of life, but depth of life.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
I recently read The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer, and in the penultimate chapter he encourages the reader to contemplate death. I found this suggested practice aligned with the Stoic practice of negative visualisation which involves imagining what life would be like without the people or things you love in an attempt to help you appreciate what you have more. We tend to take the people closest to us for granted, and we tend to ignore the simple yet profound things in our life that actually make our lives worth living.
To be clear, the idea is not to wallow in self-pity or stay stuck in your worst-case scenarios. Spending some time each day in negative visualisation helps you become more present to your life and pay attention to your life as it is unfolding. If practiced correctly; focused on the things you tend to take for granted, It helps you appreciate the good things in your life. By spending some time thinking about all the simple things in your life that actually make your life beautiful, or by learning to appreciate the people in your life that sometimes annoy you, but whom you know you cannot really live without, you learn to love the things you have in your life, instead of constantly complaining about them, or pining for the things you lack.
Singer poses the question: “What is it that won’t let us live our lives?”, meaning what is it that holds us back from being present? Why do we fixate on past and future and struggle so much with being in the now? Singer provides such a powerful example of what he means. He says that when someone is terminally ill in hospital, they desperately want to leave the hospital and go for a walk outside. Something as simple as taking a walk outside and looking up at the blue skies, has profound meaning for someone who only gets to stare at four stark hospital walls and a blank ceiling all day long.
And yet, when we do have the opportunity to be outside and look at the skies, how often do we actually do it? In fact, when it rains, we cover up or sometimes even decide to stay inside. We don’t even notice the sky. We might even complain about the rain. But that terminally ill patient in hospital would probably love to feel the rain on his/her face. The moment something becomes lost to us forever, or we face the possibility of never having the opportunity to experience it again, we realise how precious it actually is.
And that is what contemplating death is all about. Death makes life precious and beautiful, because if we didn’t face the prospect of dying, we would simply take life for granted. It’s because life is finite and we will all have to face death one day, that life is such a precious commodity. Your time here on earth is so short. You don’t know how much time you actually have.
We all delude ourselves into thinking that we have plenty of time and we ignore the reality of death. Consequently, we often live in fear of life. We don’t want to try new things or get uncomfortable. We fret about what people will think of us. We fear mistakes and failures. We put off trying new things, because it feels too risky; when the greatest risk we face, is the unlived life.
Don’t you want to live before death comes? Live fully and unashamedly? Live with rigour and joy? And savour every precious second as if it were your last? The truth is, one day, it will be your last day. It will be your last conversation, your last hug, your last meal, your last laugh, your last tear, your last breath…
So, why not let go of that scared part of you that won’t let you live fully? Be willing to say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done. Be willing to be fully present without being afraid what will happen in the next moment. That’s what happens to people who face death. They stop fearing death and they grab hold of every precious second. They stop caring what others think. They tell the people they love that they love them. They do the things they’ve been putting off for years. They stop procrastinating on their life, because they are conscious of the last grains of sand trickling through the hourglass…
Here is the irony though, we are all facing death every moment. We all have that hourglass with the trickling sand. Just because no-one has given us the timeline, it doesn’t mean that our time is not running out. In Singer’s words, the only thing there is to “get” from life, is the experience itself. Life is not something you get. It’s something you experience. And every experience is worth having – even the uncomfortable ones or the painful ones. According to Singer, you fear death because you crave life. You fear death because you think there is something you haven’t experienced yet. You don’t need more time before death. What you need is more depth of experience before death.
If you think you must go out and do something before you die, you might miss out on the actual experience in front of you. Your time here on earth is so brief and it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. You get to LIVE. You get to experience what it’s like to experience life through a body and through your senses. The human experience is truly unique. You get to experience love and pain, joy, anger, frustration, sorrow and everything in between. You get to decide what you want to create, what you want to learn, how you want to grow…
You don’t have to change your life. You just change how you live your life. Let every moment fill you to the depth of your being.
Death gives you one more gift. It teaches you that everything is temporary. Even negative experiences shall pass. If you wait long enough this too shall pass. Feel grateful to death for giving you another day, another experience. And for creating the scarcity that makes life so precious. If you do this, your life will no longer be yours to waste. It will be yours to appreciate. Live your life as though you are on the verge of death, because you are.
References:
- Breytenbach, C. (2020). The Value of Stoic Principles in Times of Crisis. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/value_of_stoic_principles_in_times_of_crisis/
- Singer, M. A. (2007). The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself. Oakland, California: New Harbinger.