One day you and I will die.
Knowing that, I look at these two questions from Leo Babauta's latest post on Zen Habits and cannot help but feel the giant crushing fist of realization thumping me collosus on the skull:
1)If someone had a video tape of your typical day, what would they see?
How you live each day is, of course, how you live your life.
2) Based on your current actions and behaviours, where would you expect to be in five years?
You can't escape the consequences of your actions.
Have you thought about it?
Giant breath.
In the hurlyburly of everyday life the fact we are mortal escapes us, and this is not by accident. If this existential fact loomed in our minds day after day, hour after hour and minute after minute it would, and does, hinder us from the stuff of normal daily functioning...Yet the crisp reminder of loss in the form of death, whether it be the body, a relationship, a job, a belief or even a fear, however painful works wonders to clear through the murk of skewed reality. A reality that tilts and swings with our emotions, replete with the wreckage and ashes of days gone by and compounded by a compulsion to make mountains (giant problems) out of molehills (relatively tiny and manageable problems). You know what I mean.
So, today I am taking a moment to let the fact that I am alive, healthy, clothed and full be enough. And I am thanking death, in all its forms, for reminding me how important it is to live.
The Rain Pauly | BOAT BEAM
Thank you to Leo Babauta @ Zen Habits for being a continual source of inspiration.
Thanks to Sylvia Ji for depicting death in a celebratory, exotic and beautiful format - the way my ancestors did.
