Stand Naked in the Wind - December 21, 2017

I contemplate death, a lot, not just mine, but the act of dying and am usually saddened by the cultural response of disgust, fear, revulsion, denial of this inevitability which is usually summed up as "I just don't want to be in pain". It makes me wonder that if one's desire is to die anesthetized is this the outcome of an anesthetized life, one in which only certain emotions and events are allowed, the rest banished. Are we so afraid of pain that we deny ourselves the opportunities of tolerating pain, experiencing pain, knowing pain, transforming pain, living with pain, learning from pain, growing with pain?

Few people speak of death with deep acceptance, reverence, even love, but the ones who do have the ring of truth to me and I am grateful for their sharing and eloquence. These are not the doctors who write about death through their lens of physical breakdown processes, those all belong to the fear of pain and demise lot. The others tend to be the buddhas, the wise ones, native elders, and poets. 

I was recently reminded of Kahlil Gibran's reflection on death because of the last sentence but I appreciate it in its entirety.