Passing

Good Morning,

A dear friend and his family are going through the loss of a loved one this week. My regards to him and his immediate family, death is never an easy part of life to accept. Yet we must. Experiencing the death of a loved one, or witnessing the death of others, can be one of the most profound events in one's life. Especially in Western culture, death is something we pretend does not exist. We are constantly encouraged to hold onto life, and even if we're with someone we know is dying, the subject is rarely brought up.

Death can be a teacher. Only in facing death, those of loved ones and our own, can we be free from the fear of it and learn the lessons it has to teach about life. Think about how much positive change has sprung from death. MADD whose work has reduced the numbers of those killed by drunk drivers was inspired by the death of a mothers child. Even the stories of christianity are centered around the death of a significant one.

The death of someone close propels us to enjoy others more fully, to assess our time carefully, to be in the present as much as we can. We must be in this moment because we will never have this moment, with this person, again. This is not wrong, this is simply the reality, this is simply how it it is and we can embrace the facts and learn from them or we can place our heads back in the sand and continue on with the illusion, only to be snapped out of it and suffer many more times in our lives.

Death can be a teacher, because it brings home to us life's temporality, its ultimate illusory quality. Viewing death in this way offers us a place from which to perceive life and death as two parts of the same wonderful experience.

My respects go out to the family and friends in this time and I want to share a simple thought: Do not seek death. Death will find you. Seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.

Peace and Love, Jim