Hmm
I had a dream the other night.
I was floating in a dark and endless void (hmm, this is cheerful...) and there I met a man with a large red beard. He began talking to me in a way that suggested we had met before but I didn’t remember him and I was, well, rather scared.
We had a long conversation, most of which I can’t remember, but my idea of what we talked about was very clear in my mind when I woke up. We were discussing essentially what I had learned in each of my many lives (yes, I know...) but the crux of the questioning was whether or not I’d worked it out yet. Whether I’d had enough of all the heart ache and joy, success and disaster, love and despair of so many, many lives.
And, rather amazingly, I did have an answer. I know, it rather surprised me when I said it. Perhaps I read it somewhere else and my subconscious lobbed it out of my memory while I wasn’t paying attention. But anyway, because it’s late I thought I’d put it up here. It’s only ten words.
The answer was;
‘Heaven is the place where you are allowed to die.’
The man in the red beard smiled and nodded. And then I woke up.
There you go. My answer perhaps, rather than anyone else’s. Or just meaningless gibberish. But it seemed an interesting answer to me. All this rushing around trying to elongate our lives. The infrastructure of denial that’s become concocted to keep us all working and consuming. It’s as though, in a sandstorm of brand names and commuter trains, we’ve forgotten that we’re all going to die.
(Incidentally I don’t mean we know it’s going to happen but have chosen to get on with life because to dwell on death is so sad and terrifying, now hand me another pint of Stella, let’s go for a Big Mac and then go home and watch Pop Idol etc...) I mean we have actually forgotten, except for those dark moments on our own at night, that one day we are actually going to die.
I think the problem with the world might be that we all live as though we’re going to live forever. We’re putting off the big questions and concentrating on the news, or the Olympics, instead of the reality. That we are very small and we live on a rock orbiting a fireball in a seemingly endless empty space. The thought of what is beyond that space is quite frightening. Beyond that is even more unsettling. And so on and so on.
I’m beginning to think that our problems stem from the fact that we live with the concept of immortality in our heads. It’s quite hard to discuss this stuff though, unless you want to hang out with people taking acid. At least in my experience.
Can you imagine anyone asking such questions in the House of Commons for example? “Would the honorable member inform the house of his thoughts on how the threat of the eternal void is effecting the population of this great land? What steps is he going to take to help my constituents come to terms with the concept of life and death in a world that seems intent on stuffing the most important questions of existence under the carpet?” They’d be heckled and be told to ‘join the real world’, which would be supremely ironic.
Then it struck me that politicians are always described by the papers that support them as ‘fiercely intelligent’. You’ve got David ‘Two Brains’ Willetts for example. But when was the last time you heard a politician, businessman or anyone in public life for that matter, described as ‘incredibly wise’?
What happened to wisdom exactly? We get a lot about intelligence. School league tables, scholarships, fast tracks, graduate training schemes... But what about the attributes that will bring a happy life? Is anyone interested in those things?
All these statesmen, businessmen, actors and entrepreneurs wanting to carve out a legacy so they will be remembered forever. All, coincidentally, millionaires or on their way to becoming one.
Our leaders seek immortality and financial wealth. Any kind of success could be seen as an attempt to seek immortality.
But perhaps one of the greatest privileges of life is, actually, the ability to die. Or at least accept it. Think about it. Share it. The simple acceptance that we will all be forgotten.
I think this lack of perspective and thought about death might account for so may people’s reluctance to actually live. I mean really live, and not just exist in a kind of half experience where you’re only marginally more frightened of dying than living.
Hmm.
Wednesday, 13 August 2008
dan kieran/blog
