Life, Death, and Beauty
I regularly frequent some Starcraft forums over at TeamLiquid.net. I am particularly fond of the "General" discussion forum, as they have some intelligent posters who make awesome posts. One thread was titled "Why are you afraid to die".
My first response was this:
Death isn't scary. I find it inspiring. It's that final moment of our life that gives meaning to all before it. It's the end of a movie, the conclusion of a story, it's what allows us to know "this is my life" (before this point our life is always changing).
Death is what makes mortality beautiful.
However, i do not want to die. As long as i can i'd love to experience all the trials, tribulations, joy, and beauty life has to offer, and when it comes to that inevitable day that defines my experiences before that point of being finished, it will only magnify it's beauty.
---------
I was asked to elaborate on my perspective, as it was quite broad.
To articulate such thoughts however, i've always found dificult. I have upon many occasions tried to iterate my experiences and my ideas into cohesive prose - and i've always come up short. Until now. I spent 3-4 hours putting it together, and while it doesn't cover everything, it makes enough sense that i'd like to share it with as many people as i can. Hello Live Journal!
It's a long read. I hope that you have the time and patience to read it through though.
----
It started when i was 10 years old. My parents, while believeing in an after life, did not have any sort of faith. They never really passed their beliefs along since they didn't really know what they believed in themselves. So, while lying in bed on some insignificant day in March of that year, i was for some random reason thinking what it would be like to be dead - and my realization crippled me. It occured that i would not think, feel, or be me. It caused a terrible anxiety in me. I could not function unless i would escape into Final Fantasy 3, my RPG of choice during that period of my life.
My parents, baffled by and distraught at my turmoil tried to aid me in finding some answers that could be of comfort to me. My dad gave me a bible, and as well "A Book of Bible Stories" for a bit of an easier (and less grotesque) read. And my mom at this time was exploring her own spiritually, by which she had come across Sylve Browne - reknown pyschic and explorer of the spiritual realm. My mom gave me 'Adventures of a Pyschic', Sylvia Brownes first book about the paranormal.
At that age, the things Sylvia Browne elaborated on were fantastical and inspiring. I was so paralyzed by fear; i would and did cling to anything that could make some semblance of sense in order to quash my distress. Her ideas that God loves us, there is no Hell, that we write our lives before we live them (called 'blueprints', or 'charts'), and that we live many many lives, as Earth is much like 'school' for our souls - these were comforting.
I was an avid fan of hers up until i was 16 years old or so. And, ironically, it was through her own writing that doubts started to stir about what she had to say. I was reading 'God, Creation, and the Universe' within where she said some extraordinary things. No longer was life about only about living through our choreographed trials, joys, and accomplishments, but that also and more-so, all our 'ideas' exist on another plane of reality. Gnomes, Pixies, Leprechauns - these are all very much real; there is no longer just one God, but two: a Mother and Father God; there are not just Spirit Guides (people on the Other Side who help guide us through our lives) but also Totems (spirit guide animals), gaurdian angels and lesser angels, and a legion of other 'entities' to help us along our path (such as the Goddess of the Night, i forget her name). These things were quite interesting to read, but they turned life so much into a fantasy that i couldn't help but start to view her books as nothing more than just that - an intricate, powerful, but completely fictional fantasy.
Despite my depreciation of her ideas, it never occurred to me to start to re-inquire about the fears that had debilitated my existance a 3rd of my life ago.
And then i was 19 years old, Mid-November, when my best friend and two others decided it would be a delightful idea to consume some Mushrooms. This was the true beginning into my very real plunge into the depths of what death 'is'. I don't know much about others' experience with shrooms, but of all the times i've done them (about 8?) i've never had a hallucination. I have done moderate to large doses everytime, and i've experienced auditory hallucinations, but never a visual. So typically i just escape to the recesses of my mind, catapluting myself into philosophical and pyschological voyages. This one was different from my others in that it sent me into a 4 month depression; or more so, Despair.
This part is very hard to describe. Anyone who has not experienced drugs will have no idea what it's like, and will not understand that any horror you can feel while sober is immensely dwarfed by the depth of it when you are not. Anyone who has experience with drugs will no better be able to know what i felt, other than knowing what i felt was immense, as my trip has not been any of theirs.
...
I could hear myself thinking. I'm not talking about thoughts we 'hear' in our heads, i'm talking about the space between. When a person attempts to 'not think' they are (most likely) unable to do so. I was not trying to not-think, however, i was thinking about what it is to think. What is happening inside us that allows us to 'hear' our thoughts? And it was between these thoughts that i started to recognize an echo, or more, a silent gap. I could 'hear' that gap; I could hear the silence. My thoughts were no longer fluid. I would be aware and i would be thinking, and in the next moment i would simply be aware without any thinking at all. At first i found this sensation extremely intriguing, i let it dance with me for a significant amount of time. But then, for some forsaken reason, i present to myself: "Now what would it be like to neither think nor be aware?" I was filled with a very brief moment - less than a moment - of fear when my gut realized where this train of thought was going to take me. However, i ignored such a thing, and tried to catapult myself into a place where i was not thinking nor feeling. I proceded to close my eyes. I 'shut off' my ears to a point where i could not hear anything. I stopped breathing; stopped feeling the sensation of air filling my lungs. I turned off 'thought' as i had been successfully experimenting with previously.
I do not know how long this lasted. I do not know if i was able to truly 'turn off' anything in my body - it may have just been a crazy drug induced slowing-of of perception (or speeding-up-of, depending on how you look at it). I cannot judge the amount of time that passed in these moments, but only know i 'awoke'. My thought-silentness was not broken or shattered, for unlike the previous thought-less awareness, there was no silence to break. There was simply a gap in my existence. Time had passed when my senses and awareness had not given their permission to do so.
And within instants, the realization came crushing home that that was what death was. My eyes shot open, my heart tried to bust out of my body. I wanted to scream, and to cry, and to claw myself out of my skin. But i was paralyzed. I sat there staring out of a window that was across from me. After 10-30 minutes i decided that i couldn't bare to be in the company of my friends, and so left without a word and laid down in my bed.
I cannot accurately describe what i was like at this time. I could not stop moving. I wanted to cry more than anything else in the world - i wanted to feel something. But no tears were forthright. I was not physically paralyzed, but mentally i was debilitated. I could not stop rehearsing the moment after i had 'ceased' to exist; the 'waking up' or 'coming back' that it was. I could not sleep for hours. The horror i felt is unparalleled to anything i have ever experienced in my existence.
Over the next month my day consisted of me waking up, moving aimlessly throughout my house. I'd lie in my bed, i'd lie on the couch. I ate little. I did not leave my house. I was too scared/lost/crippled to watch TV, read, or play video games, i had no desire to play Starcraft despite my addiction. I had no desire to talk to anyone but my mother; and my attempts to do so only scared her. She would answer the phone and i would say Hello. I would be silent for the most part. She would ask me what is wrong; i would hesitate (for my lack of ability to articulate such an experience) and whisper to her that i was afraid; she would inquire why and of what - i would respond simply that it was impossible to explain. I worried her immensely.
My feelings ranged from horror, despair, loneliness, and insignificance. These would circulate for the 12 hours a day or less that i was awake, as i'd try to spend as much time sleeping as i possibly could. Exhaustion. I will not claim what it's like to be someone in a truly horrifying circumstance - such as war, torture, or dying from a malady like cancer - but i do know exactly how exhausting a circumstance can make you. I was spiritually and mentally exhausted. And after 2 months or so, i started to get sick of it (more like boreom, but a very disgusted boredom). At this point i was able to cry, and did so daily. I was able to watch spurts of TV until something tragic happened on screen - such as seeing an animal pass away, or even the glimpse of someone of old age - someone moving ever closer to the oblivion that is death. I started to read a little bit here and there. I started to shower more than once a week; i started to eat at least once every day, as opposed to the typical 3-4 days without food. I started to interact with my friends a bit, but they would scare me very easily and i would retreat to my loneliness.
Ironically - and most fortunately - i started to read Anne Rices 'Vampire Chronicles' upon suggestion from my boyfriend (ironic because vampires are immortal). I was infatuated with the idea of immortality, that our life and our existence does not have to disappear, does not have to lose its insignificance, that a world - even a fictional one! - existed where people do not have to Die. I was able to absorb myself in "Interview with the Vampire" from noon until morning, absorbing the words in a way that i had never read words before. And that is probably the moment i would pinpoint that things in my life started to Change.
I was reading a beautiful fantasy novel, filled with beautiful creatures and fantastical ideas, and i looked out of my window to see one of the most beautiful sunrises i've ever seen in my life. A mirage of yellows and oranges cascaded into the fleeting blue of the darkness. And that's the first time it hit me. These things, My Life, the act of Experiencing, is Beautiful. Despite all the truth and despair and horror that reality is, there is still beauty. - That "Life in a Glass House" is a beautiful song! - That mothers with unconditional love look down on their children in their arms, and are beautiful - That two individuals sharing intimacy is profound and beautiful - That the reds, golds, purples that can be found in the blooms of flowers, and the seasons that turn the leaves on trees those same colours, are beautiful! And all these things exist in spite of their insignificance! Things are not beautiful because they are forever, they are beautiful because they are not!.
Since then, my life has never been a bad one. Even in struggling moments i have an immense and profound respect for life. I have an even more profoud and respect for Tragedy because tragedy only adds to our beauty. Life is harsh, and brutal, and savage. There is no justice, there is no forgivness, there is no inherant right or wrong. We amble along through life not knowing - often searching - for answers, and the truth is there are none. And how can all of this not be beautiful? How can all this feeling, and joy, and pain, and sorrow, and love, not be beautiful beyond imagining! When you watch someone lose a loved one - a child, lover, or parent - and they are utterly torn apart how can that obvious and declaration of love for that lost individual not inspire an insane respect for beauty? That such emotions are possible that losing them causes such rivals in emotion?
When we die, all of this ends. We no longer suffer tragedy, we no longer love, or be but admirers in the garden of Beauty. We lose our Awareness. It is not that this finality of it all that gives our life meaning, it's that our life was meaningful inspite of this finality. I'm in love with that finality because it's all apart of it. Beauty can't be what it is without it, and is all the more beautiful for it.
I hope others can get something out of this. It is My Life.
My first response was this:
Death isn't scary. I find it inspiring. It's that final moment of our life that gives meaning to all before it. It's the end of a movie, the conclusion of a story, it's what allows us to know "this is my life" (before this point our life is always changing).
Death is what makes mortality beautiful.
However, i do not want to die. As long as i can i'd love to experience all the trials, tribulations, joy, and beauty life has to offer, and when it comes to that inevitable day that defines my experiences before that point of being finished, it will only magnify it's beauty.
---------
I was asked to elaborate on my perspective, as it was quite broad.
To articulate such thoughts however, i've always found dificult. I have upon many occasions tried to iterate my experiences and my ideas into cohesive prose - and i've always come up short. Until now. I spent 3-4 hours putting it together, and while it doesn't cover everything, it makes enough sense that i'd like to share it with as many people as i can. Hello Live Journal!
It's a long read. I hope that you have the time and patience to read it through though.
----
It started when i was 10 years old. My parents, while believeing in an after life, did not have any sort of faith. They never really passed their beliefs along since they didn't really know what they believed in themselves. So, while lying in bed on some insignificant day in March of that year, i was for some random reason thinking what it would be like to be dead - and my realization crippled me. It occured that i would not think, feel, or be me. It caused a terrible anxiety in me. I could not function unless i would escape into Final Fantasy 3, my RPG of choice during that period of my life.
My parents, baffled by and distraught at my turmoil tried to aid me in finding some answers that could be of comfort to me. My dad gave me a bible, and as well "A Book of Bible Stories" for a bit of an easier (and less grotesque) read. And my mom at this time was exploring her own spiritually, by which she had come across Sylve Browne - reknown pyschic and explorer of the spiritual realm. My mom gave me 'Adventures of a Pyschic', Sylvia Brownes first book about the paranormal.
At that age, the things Sylvia Browne elaborated on were fantastical and inspiring. I was so paralyzed by fear; i would and did cling to anything that could make some semblance of sense in order to quash my distress. Her ideas that God loves us, there is no Hell, that we write our lives before we live them (called 'blueprints', or 'charts'), and that we live many many lives, as Earth is much like 'school' for our souls - these were comforting.
I was an avid fan of hers up until i was 16 years old or so. And, ironically, it was through her own writing that doubts started to stir about what she had to say. I was reading 'God, Creation, and the Universe' within where she said some extraordinary things. No longer was life about only about living through our choreographed trials, joys, and accomplishments, but that also and more-so, all our 'ideas' exist on another plane of reality. Gnomes, Pixies, Leprechauns - these are all very much real; there is no longer just one God, but two: a Mother and Father God; there are not just Spirit Guides (people on the Other Side who help guide us through our lives) but also Totems (spirit guide animals), gaurdian angels and lesser angels, and a legion of other 'entities' to help us along our path (such as the Goddess of the Night, i forget her name). These things were quite interesting to read, but they turned life so much into a fantasy that i couldn't help but start to view her books as nothing more than just that - an intricate, powerful, but completely fictional fantasy.
Despite my depreciation of her ideas, it never occurred to me to start to re-inquire about the fears that had debilitated my existance a 3rd of my life ago.
And then i was 19 years old, Mid-November, when my best friend and two others decided it would be a delightful idea to consume some Mushrooms. This was the true beginning into my very real plunge into the depths of what death 'is'. I don't know much about others' experience with shrooms, but of all the times i've done them (about 8?) i've never had a hallucination. I have done moderate to large doses everytime, and i've experienced auditory hallucinations, but never a visual. So typically i just escape to the recesses of my mind, catapluting myself into philosophical and pyschological voyages. This one was different from my others in that it sent me into a 4 month depression; or more so, Despair.
This part is very hard to describe. Anyone who has not experienced drugs will have no idea what it's like, and will not understand that any horror you can feel while sober is immensely dwarfed by the depth of it when you are not. Anyone who has experience with drugs will no better be able to know what i felt, other than knowing what i felt was immense, as my trip has not been any of theirs.
...
I could hear myself thinking. I'm not talking about thoughts we 'hear' in our heads, i'm talking about the space between. When a person attempts to 'not think' they are (most likely) unable to do so. I was not trying to not-think, however, i was thinking about what it is to think. What is happening inside us that allows us to 'hear' our thoughts? And it was between these thoughts that i started to recognize an echo, or more, a silent gap. I could 'hear' that gap; I could hear the silence. My thoughts were no longer fluid. I would be aware and i would be thinking, and in the next moment i would simply be aware without any thinking at all. At first i found this sensation extremely intriguing, i let it dance with me for a significant amount of time. But then, for some forsaken reason, i present to myself: "Now what would it be like to neither think nor be aware?" I was filled with a very brief moment - less than a moment - of fear when my gut realized where this train of thought was going to take me. However, i ignored such a thing, and tried to catapult myself into a place where i was not thinking nor feeling. I proceded to close my eyes. I 'shut off' my ears to a point where i could not hear anything. I stopped breathing; stopped feeling the sensation of air filling my lungs. I turned off 'thought' as i had been successfully experimenting with previously.
I do not know how long this lasted. I do not know if i was able to truly 'turn off' anything in my body - it may have just been a crazy drug induced slowing-of of perception (or speeding-up-of, depending on how you look at it). I cannot judge the amount of time that passed in these moments, but only know i 'awoke'. My thought-silentness was not broken or shattered, for unlike the previous thought-less awareness, there was no silence to break. There was simply a gap in my existence. Time had passed when my senses and awareness had not given their permission to do so.
And within instants, the realization came crushing home that that was what death was. My eyes shot open, my heart tried to bust out of my body. I wanted to scream, and to cry, and to claw myself out of my skin. But i was paralyzed. I sat there staring out of a window that was across from me. After 10-30 minutes i decided that i couldn't bare to be in the company of my friends, and so left without a word and laid down in my bed.
I cannot accurately describe what i was like at this time. I could not stop moving. I wanted to cry more than anything else in the world - i wanted to feel something. But no tears were forthright. I was not physically paralyzed, but mentally i was debilitated. I could not stop rehearsing the moment after i had 'ceased' to exist; the 'waking up' or 'coming back' that it was. I could not sleep for hours. The horror i felt is unparalleled to anything i have ever experienced in my existence.
Over the next month my day consisted of me waking up, moving aimlessly throughout my house. I'd lie in my bed, i'd lie on the couch. I ate little. I did not leave my house. I was too scared/lost/crippled to watch TV, read, or play video games, i had no desire to play Starcraft despite my addiction. I had no desire to talk to anyone but my mother; and my attempts to do so only scared her. She would answer the phone and i would say Hello. I would be silent for the most part. She would ask me what is wrong; i would hesitate (for my lack of ability to articulate such an experience) and whisper to her that i was afraid; she would inquire why and of what - i would respond simply that it was impossible to explain. I worried her immensely.
My feelings ranged from horror, despair, loneliness, and insignificance. These would circulate for the 12 hours a day or less that i was awake, as i'd try to spend as much time sleeping as i possibly could. Exhaustion. I will not claim what it's like to be someone in a truly horrifying circumstance - such as war, torture, or dying from a malady like cancer - but i do know exactly how exhausting a circumstance can make you. I was spiritually and mentally exhausted. And after 2 months or so, i started to get sick of it (more like boreom, but a very disgusted boredom). At this point i was able to cry, and did so daily. I was able to watch spurts of TV until something tragic happened on screen - such as seeing an animal pass away, or even the glimpse of someone of old age - someone moving ever closer to the oblivion that is death. I started to read a little bit here and there. I started to shower more than once a week; i started to eat at least once every day, as opposed to the typical 3-4 days without food. I started to interact with my friends a bit, but they would scare me very easily and i would retreat to my loneliness.
Ironically - and most fortunately - i started to read Anne Rices 'Vampire Chronicles' upon suggestion from my boyfriend (ironic because vampires are immortal). I was infatuated with the idea of immortality, that our life and our existence does not have to disappear, does not have to lose its insignificance, that a world - even a fictional one! - existed where people do not have to Die. I was able to absorb myself in "Interview with the Vampire" from noon until morning, absorbing the words in a way that i had never read words before. And that is probably the moment i would pinpoint that things in my life started to Change.
I was reading a beautiful fantasy novel, filled with beautiful creatures and fantastical ideas, and i looked out of my window to see one of the most beautiful sunrises i've ever seen in my life. A mirage of yellows and oranges cascaded into the fleeting blue of the darkness. And that's the first time it hit me. These things, My Life, the act of Experiencing, is Beautiful. Despite all the truth and despair and horror that reality is, there is still beauty. - That "Life in a Glass House" is a beautiful song! - That mothers with unconditional love look down on their children in their arms, and are beautiful - That two individuals sharing intimacy is profound and beautiful - That the reds, golds, purples that can be found in the blooms of flowers, and the seasons that turn the leaves on trees those same colours, are beautiful! And all these things exist in spite of their insignificance! Things are not beautiful because they are forever, they are beautiful because they are not!.
Since then, my life has never been a bad one. Even in struggling moments i have an immense and profound respect for life. I have an even more profoud and respect for Tragedy because tragedy only adds to our beauty. Life is harsh, and brutal, and savage. There is no justice, there is no forgivness, there is no inherant right or wrong. We amble along through life not knowing - often searching - for answers, and the truth is there are none. And how can all of this not be beautiful? How can all this feeling, and joy, and pain, and sorrow, and love, not be beautiful beyond imagining! When you watch someone lose a loved one - a child, lover, or parent - and they are utterly torn apart how can that obvious and declaration of love for that lost individual not inspire an insane respect for beauty? That such emotions are possible that losing them causes such rivals in emotion?
When we die, all of this ends. We no longer suffer tragedy, we no longer love, or be but admirers in the garden of Beauty. We lose our Awareness. It is not that this finality of it all that gives our life meaning, it's that our life was meaningful inspite of this finality. I'm in love with that finality because it's all apart of it. Beauty can't be what it is without it, and is all the more beautiful for it.
I hope others can get something out of this. It is My Life.