Life after death: how the pandemic has transformed our psychic landscape – a long read from The Guardian. I listened to the audio version this morning. You can also read the article here:
Modern society has largely exiled death to the outskirts of existence, but Covid-19 has forced us all to confront it. Our relationship to the planet, each other and time itself can never be the same again. By Jacqueline Rose
“What is Your WHY?”
What motivated you to choose your specific clothes today, or eat what you did, or to come to work, or choose a specific country to move to?
“Time. Love. And Death.”
“These are the 3 things behind our every WHY.”
~Will Smith, from film
Collateral Beauty
Tell me, how does one confront one’s own death? The author of THE GUARDIAN article is critical of modern society for “exiling death to the outskirts of existence” and says Covid has forced us to confront death. I think the writer is afraid of death and has a troubled view of life.
At age 13, I faced the sudden death of my beloved father. As I stared at his body, I had no choice but to accept he was gone from my life. I would never lose awareness of death.
After reflecting on death and time, I can see that neither are real. Many say, “Death is a part of life,” which seems an impossibility. In fact, death cannot participate in life at all. And no matter how many beings die, life is still here. We suffer from the loss of a dear one, but I think our own death is nothing like we could ever imagine.
Likewise, it’s a waste to imagine the unpredictable future. I can see that the future only exists as a mental concept. Planning and lessons learned are useful, but we really have but one moment, this moment right now, the only moment when you can DO something. Anything done in the past, was done in the present moment at that time; anything to be done in the future, will be done in the present moment at that time. (Eckhart Tolle THE POWER OF NOW)
Interesting thoughts.
I believe we reenter the Cosmos and once again become a part of everything. There is no physical us, only an eternal part of the expanding universe which is all encompassing.
The most beautiful and thoughtful ponderance on death expressed was in the limited series Midnight Mass. It’s really everything.
“When I die… my body stops functioning. Shut down. All at once, or gradually, my breathing stops, my heart stops beating. Clinical death. And a bit later, like, five whole minutes later… my brain cells start dying. But in the meantime, in between… maybe my brain releases a flood of DMT. It’s the psychedelic drug released when we dream, so… I dream. I dream bigger than I have ever dreamed before, because it’s all of it. Just the last dump of DMT all at once. And my neurons are firing and I’m seeing this firework display of memories and imagination. And I am just… tripping. I mean, really tripping balls because my mind’s rifling through the memories. You know, long and short-term, and the dreams mix with the memories, and… it’s a curtain call. The dream to end all dreams. One last great dream as my mind empties the fuckin’ missile silos and then… I stop. My brain activity ceases and there is nothing left of me. No pain. No memory, no awareness that I ever was, no… that I ever hurt someone. That I ever killed someone. Everything is as it was before me. And the electricity disperses from my brain till it’s just dead tissue. Meat. Oblivion. And all of the other little things that make me up, they… the microbes and bacterium and the billion other little things that live on my eyelashes and in my hair and in my mouth and on my skin and in my gut and everywhere else, they just keep on living. And eating. Uh…. And I’m serving a purpose. I’m feeding life. And I’m broken apart, and all the littlest pieces of me are just recycled, and I’m billions of other places. And my atoms are in plants and bugs and animals, and I a like the starts that are in the sky. There one moment and then just scattered across the goddamn cosmos.”
There’s a little comment about self, and then;
“How did I forget that? When did I forget that? The body stops a cell at a time, but the brain keeps firing those neurons. Little lightning bolts, like fireworks inside, and I thought I’d despair or feel afraid, but I don’t feel any of that. None of it. Because I’m too busy. I’m too busy in this moment. Remembering. Of course. I remember that every atom in my body was forged in a star. This matter, this body is mostly just empty space after all, and solid matter? It’s just energy vibrating very slowly and there is no me. There never was. The electrons of my body mingle and dance with the electrons of the ground below me and the air I’m no longer breathing. And I remember there is no point where any of that ends and I begin. I remember I am energy. Not memory. Not self. My name, my personality my choices, all came after me. I was before them and I will be after, and everything else is pictures, picked up along the way. Fleeting little dreamlets printed on the tissue of my dying brain. And I am the lightning that jumps between. I am the energy firing the neurons, and I’m returning. Just by remembering, I’m returning home. And it’s like a drop of water falling back into the ocean, of which it’s always been a part. All things… a part. All of us… a part. You, me and my little girl, and my mother and my father, everyone who’s ever been, every plant, every animal, every atom, every star, every galaxy, all of it. More galaxies in the universe than grains of sands on the beach. And that’s what we’re talking about when we say “God”. The one. The cosmos and its infinite dreams. We are the cosmos dreaming of itself. It’s simply a dream that I think is my life, every time. But I’ll forget this. I always do. I always forget my dreams. But now, in this split-second, in the moment I remember, the instant I remember, I comprehend everything at once. There is no time. There is no death. Life is a dream. It’s a wish. Made again and again and again and again and again and again and on into eternity. And I am all of it. I am everything. I am all. I am that I am.”
Wow, Doc! I’m blown away!
Death up close! . Go that right …Never be the same.
(lost 3 family members during this period – sending shock waves out …left behind horrible grief , all kinds of issues erupting )