Facing our Mortality

“With life as short as a half-taken breath, don’t plant anything but love.” – Rumi

We’ve heard of people who claim to have ‘cheated’ death, haven’t we? Probably, one was supposed to have taken a certain flight yet they slept over their alarm and missed it. Unfortunately, the plane never reached its destination safely. It crashes soon after taking off, decimating everyone on board.

Others talk of having wanted to go shopping in a certain mall. However, due to the wife’s delay while dressing up, they ended up choosing to visit another arcade instead. The twist is that their earlier choice ends up being the target of a terrorist or knife attack. Talk of those who have survived burning buildings unharmed and accident wrecks unscathed, the list is unceasing.

You see, we humans are very interesting creatures. At times life beats us so hard that all we desire is to die and get relief from our sufferings. Yet, when confronted by ‘near-death experiences’ (NEDs), we are quick to realize what Solomon the Philosopher asserted millennia ago: “A living dog is better than a dead lion.” NEDs are a stark reminder of our mortality, a perfect rebuke to our pride and impunity.

Truth is, our existence on this side of eternity is not only brief but also full of sorrow. Day in and day out, we rub shoulders with varied tokens that remind us of our mortality: the singular stubborn strand of grey hair that resists your persistent attempts to veil it; the forgetfulness to complete an important task making you miss out on a potentially promising client; ubiquitous maladies which are expensive to treat that grotesquely claim our loved ones, you name it.

Why then do we have many exuding a snooty and arrogant demeanor? Why then the domineering and overbearing attitude just because of a certain job title? Why then the sense of grandiosity just because one reigns as head of state? Why then the racketeering and marked dishonesty in business dealings just because you are the one who calls the shots? Why then the utter disregard for the cries of those who truly need sundry forms of help just because you are deluded to be irrevocably self-sufficient?

I re-echo the wisdom spewed by Sunny Bindra a couple of months ago: “None of us should imagine that we are so indispensable that what we built cannot continue without us. We are all specks on a speck. Our individual lives—no matter how seemingly impactful once upon a time—are, in the final analysis, trivial.”

Our lives are mere blips in the canvas of eternity. We matter but again, we don’t matter. As 2023 slowly takes its bow, now is the time to take stock. Time to re-evaluate whether we’ve wrongly harbored the belief that our existence here below is guaranteed for eons. Time to re-examine the motivations for our actions and re-calibrate our life goals. Time to make peace with the indisputable fact that we are mortal. Once again, I choose to punctuate this year’s last gem with the timeless poetic prose by Kahlil Gibran entitled On Joy and Sorrow:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

Cheers, good people!!