On Loving Mortal Things
Is the problem that we have trouble facing and coping with death or is it that we’re too attached to the living? If death is inevitable, then why mourn? We miss them. What of a lesser attachment? Would we miss less? Feel no grief? Is the stronger the pain a reflection of the strength of love we have? So what if we love less? Is that a life worth living? Therefore, how much love and how much mourning is the perfect ratio to feel the least amount of suffering when someone dies?
It’s written that mourning over death is wasteful, irrelevant, and unnecessary. If it is coming for us all, it is our greatest enemy of whom cannot be beaten. We won’t win. So why do we try to live if we know death will knock on our door? Not knowing when we will die, that is all this life is. To extend the perceived time we have, time that is based on how long those before us have lived. Time perceived by medicine, studies, and technologies. Time perceived by stories in the news. Lessons of diseases we fight with vaccines. Through time we have extended time still never knowing the one thing we all secretly want to know but also never wish to find out: when will we die?
Perhaps it is foolish to spend every waking moment preserving our lives, especially if it is true that our time living is already predetermined. My sentence may be served tomorrow. This evening. Is it wise to spend my next several hours with a heartbeat preserving my life? Or is it wise to simply enjoy and live the moments I have? And if that is true, that it is the wisest maneuver of all, then shan’t I continue each and every moment living just as that - simply enjoy. What then, shall happen if someone I love dies in one of those moments? Will I feel pain or is it more necessary to accept and continue moving forward with joy?
Is the other side of death then love rather than hate? We can receive the gift of love freely and abundantly in this world but the consequence of so much love is so much pain when it ends. And if we choose to not feel pain when it ends, then we must choose to love very little, if at all.
This essay was written one year after my father’s sudden passing in a car accident. The amount of pain I felt was like nothing in this world and I realized that the only way to get rid of it would be to go back in time and detach from loving my father. Without that love, perhaps I would’ve been the one who died first.