Hello Death, I am Starting to Live
The world waits to die, holding its collective breath, conscious of the elephant in the room. And squanders away lives not yet fully lived.
But imagine a world without death — imagine yourself living a million years.
A million years!
- Your bodies would carry the aches and pains of a million years.
- Your brain would be filled with prejudices.
- Your past experiences would be your enemies — they would guard the gates to your mind and not let anything new pass.
- All the wonders of life — adventure, mystery, surprise, anticipation, hope, desire, fear, anticipation — would have become meaningless. They would have lost their charm, their mystery, their uncertainty.
Would you want such a life?
Imagine now, that you want to do away with the problems which accompany longevity — how would you go about doing that?
Well, you would get new bodies every few years. Then, you would get new brains, or rather, get the same brains, minus the clutter, the prejudices, the junk. In effect, you would seek to be the same person, with new bodies and new brains, carrying the best forward, shedding the useless.
Well, exactly!
Nature seems to have figured this out for herself long ago when she invented us creatures called living beings — she planned this renewal and propagation through a process called procreation!
Through procreation, the old dies, the new replaces the old and carries forward its best in new bodies and fresh minds. It carries forward the best of the parents, through the children, and the genes which have taken part in their creation.
It would not be incorrect in this sense, to consider our children as being us — only much-improved versions!
So, celebrate death, for it is but a release from the old, the useless and the irrelevant — celebrate your progression through your children — or even children of others. They carry the best in you forward. You continue to live through them.
As additional comfort, understand, that those abstract things — your words and actions — well those never die!
Ever tried to kill any action or a word after it is released? Try it to realize the impossibility of it!
Gandhi is as much around today as he was when he walked this earth. Hitler still harangues us through the pages of history, to warn us of what might be if we are not careful. At a closer level, my grandmother, bless her soul, is still around in my dreams and in our family conversations through her pithy pearls of wisdom, “apna ghar te hag hag bhar!” (your own home is yours, to shit in as you please!)
If that is her, then who was it that passed away? Surely it was only her old, withered body and those ideas of hers which had failed the test of time.
And who am I, if not a better version of my grandparents, and parents minus their old bodies and wearied minds?
Through me, the best of my grandmother still walks this earth and speaks her mind. That which should have gone is gone and that which ought to have carried on is still very much around and will continue to be…
Ditto for my children, and my foster children — my students whom I had the privilege to teach, friends and others whom I touched through my words and actions. When I die, they will carry forward the best of me, hold my worst in their minds, as a caution against that which should not be, and forget the rest, which should not matter anyway!
Will I die? Yes and no. My body will die, of course, my soul will not — as that which carries on would be my soul, if you may — not some ghostly apparition, crying for redemption or yearning to live yet again, but as undeletable energy — those words and actions of mine which deserve to live on — amalgamated yet again into who knows what.
In that sense, I will live on. And on, and on…
So I rue not my seemingly short ‘life’. That would be a shallow understanding of it.
I revel instead in those of my children and their children, and in others, whom I had the chance to touch and change in some manner.
About my passing, I will sing:
“When I die my friends, don’t weep for me,
For I am gone, to solve,
Another mystery.
To look beyond the stars,
To go where I longed,
To peep around corners yet unseen!
And you, my friend, shall follow!
But not yet, not yet.
It‘s a privilege given me,
You will have to bide awhile.
For I am gone, to another place,
To solve another mystery…
