A Clod of Clay! (Four of Five)

Given a 50/50 chance at life one may as well laugh. Each new breath is a celebration, let alone a day, a week, a month. But for all of us, some year will ring its bell and then we shall have said our last goodbye. Thing is, we never know when or from what, and there are platitudes aplenty about making each moment valuable. Scriptures, poets, sages, and philosophers hearken on about the necessity of awareness, temperance, forbearance, and preparedness. But few us believe it will be us. And then some event takes place, and the end of the journey is made more clear, and one suddenly is at pains to get all one's ducks in a row. The list of those to contact, those with whom to share the news, and those simply to allow to let things be discovered, or not, is compelling. Proximity is so relevant. There are many new friends we've made in the last two years who have been around to see me, checked up on us altogether more frequently than those at a distance, simply because they're nearby, and they can reach us quickly if needs be. It all is quite natural.  We each want to help, to love, to share, and even to ensure we've said our 'proper' goodbyes. Then again, some fear the prospect of death, and keep away purposefully.

Dying is easy; Living is hard. When the gravestone says R.I.P. it connotes being Resolved In Perpetuity, (though being at Peace, while living, would be nice too). Every good book about life, from ways to fight against pain to learning to integrate it, has as its core the objective of being at peace with one's lot. Being happy is quite a different thing. Happiness is evidently temporary; it easily may be disturbed when someone lets off a smell in the elevator. But being at peace is the acceptance of all, while still exercising the preference to open a window.

Reincarnation may be a proven fact. For me it certainly is not. I find it ego-binding to think that 'my' soul will reinvest in whatever new baby or animal is born reasonably soon after my death. (Given my body type, I may well again start from the ape-like-level, ha!) But I do sense that whatever consciousness of ME there is within my atoms that they will easily disperse upon my cremation, that they shall simply become immersed in all energy, quite different from the clots that individually coagulate and now scrape away at my every breath for life. Yet perhaps some souls do stay concentrated, concomitant with reinvesting themselves as an ongoing identity; how else to explain the myriad people who've such powerful stories of themselves in past lives?

Death is easy. No more pain. No more worries. Just gotta get past St. Pete's Gate, mayhap, and then onto whatever mansion has been prepared for my ignorant and unleavened soul. (I am hopeful it will be the garden shed for me, with some tools with which to continue trying to feed and nurture beauty. For in heaven as on earth I would have beauty of insight, of intuition, of understanding, of compassion, and of appreciation for the very gift of the journey of living. Then again, if one is at peace, even one's stooping to till the earth-garden of life ain't so hard, is it?)

But for those who go on living life is very hard indeed. We steal each other's plots of security, make infirm our sense of stability, and confabulate our ease of connection. We lose the maps to inner peace. We neglect the tools by which we might tend to our gardens of the moment, and some of us do not see weeds as worthy or necessary. The bees die for lack of dandelions. Our needs to control our produce, ourselves, and each other is pandemic. We are making Pangaea sick, broken up, ill. We find it most difficult simply for all to be, and to nurture all at the edges toward a more-better compassion, integration, assimilation, absorption, and acceptance.

Perfection is a myth. Or it is temporary at best. What one person exclaims is perfect the other will claim as insufficient. We find it difficult to let be. And should these be my last words, then I declare each and every one of us free. No 'shoulda, coulda, wish I hadda'. Life is for me and thee. And in the end, forgiveness, care, and being loving is like sunlight to our gardens. Free!