Sometimes I fear you, because you might take away what I have grown to love, what I have attached myself to and I am terribly afraid of the pain this rupture might cause.
And yet you are my greatest teacher and dying is my purpose in life.
Dear death,
You are my most precious teacher, a faithful companion ever since my birth, my final destination, my inspiration.
Many, if not most, are terribly afraid of you and most of the time I am one of them. You take what we love, you destroy what we have built, you rattle on our attachment chains….and I won’t lie to you: it hurts like hell. And most of us are convinced that we are barely able to survive this pain. There is life before and after loss, it is a turning point, a turning point of awareness.
But you also bring liberation, and at times relief. We, as humans, have a very subjective take on you. If you take away things we’ve been trying to get rid of, we applaud you. If you take away things or people we hold on to for dear life, we abhor you. We want to be your master, we want you to follow our rules. But you do not bend and you do not grant favours. There is no bargaining with you. You take what is due. You leave room for something new.
Sometimes I fear you, because you might take away what I have grown to love, what I have attached myself to…and I am terribly afraid of the pain this rupture might cause.
And yet you are my greatest teacher and dying is my sole purpose in life.
As I was born into this world I was born into attachment, into bondage, into dependence. My growing is my dying. Every day I let go of a new attachment, everyday a new string is loosened, a thought looked at with more distance. Every day I can breathe a little lighter, feel more spaciousness.
The more I commit myself as your pupil, the less I fear your reign.
“It is life that separates us, in death we are united.”
In life, we take on a physical shape, we dress in a meat suit that separates us from everyone else. Suddenly it is us versus them, a very lonely existence.
And so we start assembling things around us, that offer us a certain sense of belonging. And when these things perish, we feel a certain sense of loss. But things are usually easy to replace. It is only if there is a layer of memory, of nostalgia coating these things, that the pain is deeper.
We also assemble ideas that make up our sense of self. Beliefs, thought patterns, values.
And we assemble people around us, family and friends. Other lives dressed in a meat suit that we attached ourselves too. And we call this attachment love, saying things like “I cannot live without you.” Until we have to. Until we feel the pain of an attached physical shape being ripped away.
The growth pain of expansion is also the pain of rupture that comes with letting go of certain ideas and beliefs.
