Do you wake up everyday with the thought that the next moment you might be dead? I guess not. Especially if you are not waking up on a hospital bed!
As days, weeks and years roll by, we bubble with life, going about our 'business' without much of a thought about our frailty and the human eventuality - death.
Just like the day we are born can usually not be 100% predictable, even more so the day we die. That undated appointment that every person must keep.
Death must be the least understood experience of humans and yet, it's the most certain. Natural, accidental, self inflicted or assisted, death comes to all.
Like I was pointing out earlier, most of our life we rarely give a thought to death. It sounds so ominous, we cannot bear to keep the thought for a moment longer. However, should death continue to be a topic shrouded in darkness? Should it continue to elude us and catch us unaware?
The very nature of death makes such questions difficult to answer. Often unexpected, the grief that is communicated by the loss of a fellow human being hardly gives us any window to learn from it. Moreover, The dead is, well, dead! You cannot experience death and tell the story. Its the omega experience. Only the dead know how death feels - that's if they feel something . Those who live on only feel the impact of the death: the loss, the pain, the void.... I am reminded of a quote by a friend 'death is for the living'
Well, every once in a while, we are reminded, usually shockingly, that we are not immortal beings. At least not yet. The death of a loved one rattles through our being, shaking the very foundations of what we believe and hold dear. We give the thought to the fact that we too must go someday too. And hopefully, we learn some lessons, reorder our priorities and focus on our purpose. For this is the whole duty of man.
--- Inspired by the tragic death of Dr Myles Munroe 9/11/2014. May his blessed soul and those of the 8 others rest in peace.
