We humans crave certainty and coherence. Anything unknown to us is unnerving to different degrees, sometimes consciously and often unconsciously. We cannot know anything about the future. The present could at any moment change in unforeseen ways to an unimaginable extent but death is always guaranteed. That is the only certainty in life. Still, we do not embrace it, do not dare to accept it. One reason for that is: while death is irrevocably sure to happen to us, there is no certitude about what it entails. We don’t know how we will perceive it or if there is something after it. That is why the topic of death is so often evaded.
Refreshing read and reflection on death. Very few people wish to speak about death because it makes them uncomfortable.
It came to me as a thought, after attending a funeral this summer, that something seems to happen to the fabric of reality when we, who are left, witness death. The moment when life, as we know it, pricks a hole in an invisible membrane and we linger in something else for a period of time.
We can, of course, only observe it from the outside. We don't have access to the mystery itself. Yes, we will, for a moment, be suspended in that opened dot in the fabric of time where death hangs - but we will not be with it. We can only perceive it with our human senses.
Perhaps you have witnessed death and know exactly what I mean. Perhaps you will one day witness it, and see that it is different from everything else you will ever witness in your entire life. Different from what they told you it would be. Longer or shorter than they told you it would be. Sudden or expected and always different than they told you it would be. That is death.
Refreshing read and reflection on death. Very few people wish to speak about death because it makes them uncomfortable.
It came to me as a thought, after attending a funeral this summer, that something seems to happen to the fabric of reality when we, who are left, witness death. The moment when life, as we know it, pricks a hole in an invisible membrane and we linger in something else for a period of time.
We can, of course, only observe it from the outside. We don't have access to the mystery itself. Yes, we will, for a moment, be suspended in that opened dot in the fabric of time where death hangs - but we will not be with it. We can only perceive it with our human senses.
Perhaps you have witnessed death and know exactly what I mean. Perhaps you will one day witness it, and see that it is different from everything else you will ever witness in your entire life. Different from what they told you it would be. Longer or shorter than they told you it would be. Sudden or expected and always different than they told you it would be. That is death.
[I came here from Thomas J Bevan]
Wonderful post, and it was an honor to be a first reader with Ivan!