So now I know

Mortality: the state of being subject to death.

We know we are all mortal but we refuse to believe it. If we truly believe our fate on a daily basis we would become immobilized and succumb to our personal mortality immediately.

We create religion to help us sustain life, to keep our chins up as it were, but religion is at best a good pain killer for the truth about our mortality. We are born. We live. We die. All the religions in the world and beyond can not relieve or ward off the effects of death and I am not subject to being fooled into any life after death manufactured ridiculousness…I wish I were more foolish or easily fooled; I truly wish I were a fool.

I have come as close to death as one can without dying. Really, I have. I do not mean I have been sick and near death. I do not mean I came close to being killed in an untimely accident. I do not mean I have been on some war front and witness to the tragedy of mass killing. What I mean is that I have held diminishing life in my arms and tasted the combination of tears mixed with blood in my mouth and swallowed it down into the core of my being and became one with the end of it all. And then I understood; the cost to enter the belly of death was beyond my soul’s worth but now, at least, I am in the know.

The most intriguing epiphany I can offer is that death is life and life is death. They both taste the same and sleep in the same bed and both depend on the other for existence and once you come to understand that they are one you no longer need to create false scenarios that offer panaceas for something that needs no cure.

If you stop turning a blind eye to death and embrace the fact that it is all around you every minute of your breathing day then perhaps the excruciating reality of your inevitably end can become more understandable and less immobilizing, maybe, perhaps…I hope.