On Reaching For Life (And The Nearness of Death)

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life."
~ Steve Jobs

The last blog I wrote on uncertainty failed to mention the greatest uncertainty of all -- Death.  Death makes life possible.   And one day we will take our final breath.  But that is not such a bad thing.  Without death, we would be overrun with every living thing that inhabits the planet.  Given our burgeoning human population we might already be at the point of too much life. 

When we consider death, which we rarely do, it has us realize that life is finite.  We are not going to live forever.   And yet this realization, as Albert Camus noted, makes the living of life that much sweeter. So  -- let's get on with the living. Dying is the easy part. It happens in a moment.  Life is happening in every moment.  

Now ... and now ... and now ... and there again.  Life is happening!! 

In every action we take and in every breath we take we are getting on with living life or getting on with dying.    

With the pandemic, the importance of life and living life to the fullest has come into sharp focus.  Being confined is a pretty good lens through which it is easy to see what is important.  Trust me, I know.  I was confined for 26 weekends.  It has one savor not just freedom but the living of life.  Confinement is a slow death.  

In a weird way the pandemic has something to teach us about how to live.  Nothing is going back to "normal" and it shouldn't.  Normal was, in many ways dysfunctional.  The pause is time to take a breather.  A full breath.  Not a breath like we'd been taking; drowning in our own mucus. Namely, all the stuff we've been tolerating in our lives that just doesn't work anymore. 

We could be on the cusp of a new reality if we are ready to give birth to it.  That would require not going back to dysfunctional as usual.  It could mean embracing a new paradigm.  A shift in thinking that profoundly reorders priorities.  

As we consider our own confinement during the pandemic here are a few queries: 

• What has come into focus?  
• What is newly urgent? 
• What has faded and is no longer important? 
• What new impulses are rising up? 
• Do you still feel like you have an abundance of time?  
• Is it time to get on with something? (something that has been back-burnered for a long time) 
• What are you waiting for?  (or put another way -- there is never the "perfect moment" -- just now) 
• When you get still ... and take a deep breath ... what arises? 

Joseph Olejak 

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