We die as we have lived. If we are fortunate, we have death to teach us about our investment in our lives. It was death that helped me open my heart to living more fully. It took a while for the lesson to sink in, though.
Probably as we age, many come to this realization naturally. We are aging and our friends and family members die. It becomes part of our conversations. I wish that younger people would be able to benefit from understanding their mortality earlier in their lives but we are a youth-centric culture consumed by eternal vitality and it has shoved the value of death's lessons under the rug for us to stumble upon as an annoyance. The way things are now, children equate death with violence and a terrible fear of falling victim to someone's rampant rage and poor judgement. Ignoring death is not helping us with violence and heinous acts of suffering in this world. Editing death out of our narrative devalues the truth of life and makes it easier to kill and hurt others by holding space for this gaping blind spot in our awareness.
Humanity has been at this foolish idea of vilifying death for thousands of years and it has supported wars and innumerable acts of vengeance. It will not get better until we accept that we all have an expiry date and tame the fears we hold about how evil lurks in the shadows of life at every turn. Studying our relationship with death and teaching our children the sanctity of life this way dis-empowers killing and punitive power plays in human beings.
Hafiz talks here about how when he dies he will be giving back to the earth his body and how this will feed this benevolent planet that has sustained him all his life; a life that he got to choose to cultivate, navigate and blossom into.
Thank you for listening.
Here is a link to a previously posted piece on my journey with plans for my own green burial in the Pacific Northwest called, Living and Dying on The Take. There are two moving and important short videos in this post that you might enjoy.
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The original post in this series of poems by Hafiz (including an addendum regarding the authenticity of these poems) can be found here. Also, my thoughts on this series a year into these poems, HERE.
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz and translated by Daniel Ladinsky can be purchased here.
My book can be purchased HERE. E-book HERE. The Season Two blogcasts with audio excerpts from my book begin HERE: in Behind The Lines. This reading of the book excerpts in a mixed media format is Season Two of this blog. These recorded excerpts are outside the chronological order in which the book was written. Podcasts with audio only beginning with episode 22 can be found HERE.