One Life

One life, one chance to live
It is possible to die

Whatever may happen, whether human beings believe that there is an afterlife or not, everyone knows that there is just one life, the one we’re living (as we read these words, as I write them). I have an unsettled feeling a lot of the time – don’t you – that most, if not all of us, do not live as though we have just one life, this one chance, to live on Earth. We live as though life were filled with second chances, we live as though what we do had some meaningful long term significance, when, it’s obvious, our shopping and driving does not.

Not our relationships, not our possessions, not even ourselves, can bridge the divide of death. If you have ever had a loved one die, you will have realized the cruel reality of it. Nothing you say, or do, or think, will bring them back. There is nothing to comfort you. That person you knew is gone. Perhaps not forever, but certainly for the rest of your life. When someone dies there is a sudden ending, eclipsing, of all that that person was. All that remains, immediately after the end of their lives, is a place to put their body (in a coffin), or somewhere to leave their ashes. A stone or metal plague then bears testimony to a life. And of course when you stare at the stone, there are only letters that spell a name, words with some mantra, and dates, to account for a life. But none of this can account for the spirit of a person. It’s up to you to do that.

They will leave behind a room, a bed, clothes and shoes, photographs and other personal possessions. They will leave behind all those things they used to do and say, the people that knew them, and they, for all their kindness or harshness – just like dead pets, or squashed insects - will never communicate or be seen again.
So in the husky words of Virginia Woolf (whose own sophisticated contemplations led to madness, and finally, suicide): “It is possible to die.”
Let’s try that again slowly, and for emphasis, let’s suspend it between paragraphs.

It is possible to die.

While 80% of South Africans profess to be Christians, probably most of that percentile takes comfort in the idea, from the belief, that when they die, they will go somewhere.
I remember as a very young child, my brother and I shared a room, and at night we contemplated concepts that fascinated us. Like the universe. And gravity. How can a person standing at the bottom of the world (as South Africa is invariably depicted on the average plastic globe) not fall off? How can we, knowing we are standing on a round, spinning object, and flying through space, not spin off, or at any second, disappear in a puff of smoke, or an erratic burst from the sun (or a belch from our own planet’s core). But what really got us going, as 6 and 8 year olds, was the idea, correction, the absolute certainty of death. Because how it works is if you are alive, you will one day, most certainly, die. And after that, no one really knows what happens to you, except that you start off by dying all by yourself. In short: despite the hype, it doesn’t look good.
And let’s face it, death is basically an extreme version of falling asleep. Death means that one no longer exists. Usually, I think it is fair to say, dying is associated with a large degree of discomfort, which is to say, dying is not pleasant – at least, not initially. It is probably also accurate to say that, depending on how lucky you are, death may in fact be the most unpleasant moment of your entire life. That’s saying a great deal. Perhaps read it again if it hasn’t sunken in. Not much is said about death though, because people tend not to be around to do justice to just how unpleasant it is (to drown, to die in a car wreck, to die of a heart attack). Survivors (say on the same doomed aeroplane) tend to have head injuries and cannot accurately report what their companions must have suffered, and when they can, they often choose not to.

I have been in a serious car accident, and it’s certainly not a series of events I like to visit every day, because it’s an unpleasant, spine shaking awareness. But, if you will indulge me, I remember the moment before the car collided as being so inevitably horrible, that my entire body went limp. I also remember the swarm of fire, very slowly, burning through me, as I realized in the aftermath – at the end of the brief skidding, that I was still alive. That fire was the fire of pain, and it was just insufficient to overwhelm me, so I remained conscious throughout.
Surviving a car accident is a useful lesson. It is just one situation where we may come to think of a simple machine, a car, as a deadly instrument. For about 1 month I was not comfortable being in one. Because, after all, being in one had nearly killed me. But I got over it, and now I can drive around in a car without dwelling on the fact that driving presents a daily opportunity to quickly and easily be killed, or to kill other people or animals close to the road.
Religion seems to make death into a metaphor. When we think of death we imagine angels, and heaven, and some or other benign city with paved roads. I remember after my mother died, I had a hard time imagining her in some sky city, because I knew for a fact where her body was. I also had a hard time imagining that one hour, five days, a year after her death, she was somewhere else, singing songs. At least in terms of those who temporarily survive – those left behind after those around us die – death is permanent. People will scoff and excavate fragments out of a newspaper, talking about a tunnel of light, but I have to say, when my knee was gutted to resemble a volcano in my car accident, I also felt a fire. It’s not an experience I would choose to repeat. I’d rather choose life.
Meanwhile, I wonder. If more human beings did not believe in the afterlife, would we not value our lives a great deal more, and live in a way that demonstrated an effort to savour each moment, to protect, celebrate and respect and love each other? I believe that the collective view of a ‘second life’ (supposedly better than this one, where we are rewarded by a King for all our sacrifices) means we waste our first life, and we rationalize not facing the issues we need to face, we rationalize our fears for not participating in something, based on the idea that we will be rewarded.

In High School some of the kids came up with this mantra: what if you die before you’ve had sex? The thinking went on that surely as soon as you’re capable of it; you should make the most of it, because soon you might be dead. It’s a simple statement, worth considering. What if you die before you’ve ________? Fill in the blank yourself.
In that question, a great deal of truth and meaning resides. We should not choose, as is the craze with suicide bombers, to die for something. We should live for something. And it is perhaps intelligent to be aware that maybe, just maybe, when we die, we sleep, never to awaken from our sleep. We are, just as we were before we were born: No more in the existence of things. The world continues without us, remembering us for a time, and then, we are no more, not even a memory. With these thoughts, be mindful of your beliefs and the doctrine they’re based on, and be mindful of each precious day that dawns for you.