Death.

"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."  

- Friedrich Nietzsche

I guess in everyone’s life there comes a time when they are faced with mortality. This week, I had a couple of family members pass away. Both of them were probably a little young by modern standards, but neither lost out on a chance to live a full life. Both were lucky enough to have children and grandchildren, had many friends and will be sorely missed by their families. I’d like to say I knew them well, but with that intergenerational barrier the relationships were distinctly one of ‘whanaunga’ – which we can liberally translate to mean ‘extended family’.

Coupled with this, a recent friend of mine has become starkly aware of their own mortality, and finding its steely glare to be a little too much to bear. This fear prompts many questions around spirituality, consciousness and a desire for an eternal life of any kind. This has had me thinking quite a bit about what I want from my life, and why our actions should define who we are.

For those that find solace in spirituality and religion, the thought of passing from ‘this world’ (as they put it, clearly I am not of this persuasion) can often be a little less scary. The promise of life eternal can grant believers a feeling of relative ease as the end of tangible consciousness comes to an end (I say relative, because I think we all fear death on some level),  because the life they lead on earth is/was merely just a portal to something better.

BUT... Even the strongest of believers acknowledges that their time here amongst the rest of us has a finite timeline.

The fear of death is not only a pragmatic one (being afraid of the actual act of dying and potential suffering), but it is also the hugely egotistical and personal acknowledgement that your chance to make an impact on the world or those around you must come to an end. In the rarest of cases people leave a legacy that extends beyond a generation, but for the most part we all just become links in the chain of evolution.

One of the biggest ideological problems I have with religion is, and this is especially true with the Judeo-Christian and Islamic faiths, that this life is all but meaningless compared to the next. That one’s whole existence should be aimed at setting up the next – an eternal reward for a life of subservience and dispelling of critical thought. This removes any context from our lives and can often produce horrible results.

However, I am not here to discuss religion.

My main concern with many people, and I am often just as guilty of it myself, is that we lack perspective. There is so much life to be led, so many experiences to be had, and so much happiness to be gained from the world around us, but our own lives and troubles seem to stand in the way of that. Everything seems too much to handle, or stressful, when it doesn’t need to be. Whether you are a believer or an atheist like myself, it is important to give your own life context – because nobody else can.

If you are not doing something to improve your quality of life, measured only by your own standards, then you are doing it WRONG. If you value love and relationships you should be working on those things. If you value activism and the environment, then get off your ass and do something. If you value a career and the bling, then I hope you know enough about the world to be able to make it big, but are also DOING something about it.

The real tragedy comes not from death, but from a life unfulfilled. 

RIP: Splotch & Brownie.

The world has lost 2 of its real characters this week