My, my, how wicked we’ve become. The world is a mess. We are living in a world committed to doing its best to desensitize from human commonality. We lack compassion. There is a divisiveness breeding a dichotomy where the lines between decency and malice have become so strong that it leaves little hope of compromise. The world was never perfect. But not long ago, it was a world where the words, “Can we all just get along,”—uttered out of the total chaos of the LA Riots of 1992—profoundly resonated with hope after such a cruel event. It conveyed: We have seen our worst and now we can heal. Simple, yet profound. And for a while, it was working. But, in the last few years, galvanized resentment and escalating spiteful rhetoric have vastly changed our complex humanity into an unpredictable and volatile one. The essence of those famous words has long been forgotten and are far removed from today’s collective psyche. Our world today is uncertain—disqualified from decency and commonality. And sadly, we seem to prefer a dark road, away from civility, in the company of chaos: In the spirituality of Death.
There is darkness on the horizon.
Who’s on the side of right or wrong is irrelevant—a no-nevermind if you ask me. But now we have summoned dark forces that are drawing thicker lines in the sand. These lines in the sand once meant a challenge: To create or declare an artificial boundary and imply that crossing it will cause trouble. But today, it implies a metaphorical line people on either side just walks away from because we don’t want to compromise.
Nothing should surprise anybody in today’s polarized environment. Things are so bad you can’t reason and explain a point without an unintelligible, calculated, hatred-filled counter statement—which only escalates matters to the levels of physical threats. The spiteful rhetoric has become as certain as Death and taxes, more so when civility demands an absence from humanity. To take a line from “Meet Joe Black” on Death and taxes: “What an odd pairing.” And now you throw in passionate polemics, and it becomes a triumvirate for a new world order.
We are disconnecting. We are further apart now than we had been when the world lived on the rightful margins of old wars and uncertainty. But at least, in the past, there was a romantic notion in the way we looked at the world despite its burdens. We have stripped ourselves of that romance.
Today, the world is wide open; we should learn from it. To learn our world is not just a physical and emotional journey. It is a rite of passage; it is a spiritual journey.
Spirituality is the key to everything. Spirituality is a journey of self-discovery and self-healing. It doesn’t have to be about religion. Call it: Seeking wisdom or just growing up. But, it is a path that takes us to every nook and cranny of our souls and through the barrenness of life in search of who we are in the grand scheme of life. It is the Absolute purpose.
Oh, but how deserted lies the Soul! It is barren from the vicious and escalating retorts of such a confined world. Oh, my friends, we are lacking moral conviction and compassion. We are lacking spiritual discipline. We are living in a state of anomie—the absence of shared rules, standards, values, etc.
So I ask, why then have Death as part of your journey? The burden of Death on our minds restricts life. Death has its purpose: It is the end of something great. Let him be!
But as the threatening rhetoric escalates, Death has positioned itself right along with us in the journey. Who could blame him? We have invited him. We are ingratiating ourselves to him. The journey to find ourselves—the reinvention of our soul or any profound discoveries—is instead vulnerable to daily Deathly rhetoric. Death contrives to suck the marrow out of life.
Living absent of spirituality is dealing with the Death of the spirit. Death of the spirit is the death of compromise.
And why Death, or the spirituality of Death? Well, first, my less than charismatic and imperfect blog is after all, about nothing-and-all. So, sometimes it may just be a shot in the dark or a dart to a bunch of handwritten topics on sticky notes that decide material for the page.
But, why not Death? It’s relevant. Our polarized environment makes him relevant—more so now than any other time. And what I mean by the spirituality of Death is that we unburden ourselves of living and burden ourselves with all that’s wrong in this world, yet always asking, “What is wrong with the world?” The spirituality of Death means accepting the vulgarity of it all. It is the willingness to do whatever it takes, to serve a darkened narrow-minded point of view.
But, in understanding ourselves, we at least overcome our misunderstandings of others. And, if we don’t, then life becomes too linear, too fast, and we narrow our journey. It becomes too fast to look around; always in a hurry to get to a Death that’s always known we are heading its way—but now Death is all too happy riding along next to us.
Linear living is like driving on the autobahn: Too fast to discover anything; too fast to take the scenic routes; too fast to bridge such a magnificent world.
Obviously, I see Death poised; therefore, I must be spiritually dead. However, I am not without the ability to listen or compromise. I have always known of him. I bet I think of him more than the ordinary person, more so nowadays—And why not? He is only our invisible companion—the omnipresent 1,000-pound elephant in the room. I never thought of him as I do now, though—with curiosity and calm, as opposed to as in my past with fears and anxieties. But you know what? I blame Emily Dickinson.
Ever since I read Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” I have lived with this image—albeit a blurred one—of Death as a gentleman caller. Propped in a devilish three-piece black chalk stripe suit, a red handkerchief, bowler hat and cane traipsing around until needed. But even though the concept of Death casts long shadows, he never strutted his gait out in the open as he does now.
Dickinson romanticized him for me.
She made me aware of him in ways I never thought of him before. She gave him life—personified him for me; added a human face. And now, with a world so linear-minded, he need not be the grave and ragged Grim Reaper in his despairing ways of old. Now, the Dapper Dandy of Death is biding his time in idle, while amongst us, content, whistling down the street, enjoying a world in chaos. I see him all too well.
Although, to be honest, I’ve never felt comfortable talking about Death—too dark of a topic. However, since I’m no stranger to frequent bouts of anxiety—horrified by a fear of dying that sometimes sprouts out of nowhere—I can relate. I dislike when the thought of Death vacuums my sensibilities into a void where nothing exists but fear. I am trapped and I am claustrophobic. But, after hyperventilating into a bag for a few minutes, I come to realize that nothing is more germane than Death around the corner, at every turn, waiting to pounce at the right moment. I never expected it to be this tangible. And although ever-present in my mind, Death used to be over there, just out of reach, out of sight, and everywhere else, but never sitting next to me. Death is impossible to ignore, but it’s getting harder and harder to disregard in today’s secular environment.
“Who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” (Hebrews 2:15)
As a pessimist, and as a matter of perspective, I believe life to be linear: we are born, we live, we die, it’s as simple as that. But I don’t believe we find answers to life without a modicum of proportionality. Therein we start our journey. Our time spent on earth is far too short. And it takes a much more direct and speedy route to our irreconcilable end when we limit our understanding of the world. We are limiting the possibilities for newer paths. From my perspective, the time wasted disregarding compromise with fellow-man is a time that gets us closer to the inevitable end—Death. If you have ever feared Death, it is now more manifest than ever. In this explosive and volatile environment, it only means that Death has become an intimate friend. You just don’t know it. He is a part of every conversation—nuanced in the rhetoric we abuse.
And when we narrow our moral scope we shorten our lives. Proportionality of a decent life implies a circular life—a full life when we explore and connect with the world. It allows us to open dialogues with humanity. It allows putting a human face to a friend. But, it doesn’t matter how proportional our lives are if today’s discourse attracts us to the polarizing rhetoric that permeates our world today. It detracts from evolving.
These are disturbing times. Human decency is dying, and it has never been more obvious than the times we live in now. There is no reason we can’t be idealistic and altruistic. But, what we cannot be is: egocentric and combative.
For life is an unambiguous journey—unaltered; it is the only earnest and organic path we will find ourselves in on our way to a finding ourselves. And if has just begun and not completed, it is ongoing—so why waste it? What we do in life counts towards recuperating human decency if that is what we want—and it should be.
There is little to believe in today’s world. And that is a big problem. To the faithless, there is no God—and if true, then Death has risen to be the greatest Absolute Monarch. It is perhaps the real journey. We all know Death is guaranteed. This would mean there is an imbalance to life. We are born, we live, we die—that’s it. Death is the only certainty life decrees without equivocation. It is a boring simplification of life, but devoid of faith, and absolutism being a cause for achieving a higher plane, then Death is the ultimate and definitive Absolute.
So why waste life inflicting pain, creating more divisiveness, or creating an avenue for Death to stride unencumbered? Have faith in humanity. Believe a little!
Maybe this post is not as linear as it could have been considering the proportionality of Death in it. But life seems so unbalanced now. It is chaotic. So how do we reconcile that and this post? Well, to be honest, I don’t know. I wish I had an Absolute answer. All I can offer is that life can and is linear, but how we live our lives is not. Linearity is a sprint to an end that offers no proportionality. So don’t let it deter you from wandering. Don’t let it deter you from taking on an organic and random road in search of proportionality.
Sure, signs along the way will always remind us of the inevitable end. Death is pervasive. It is there in front of us. Whether we want to believe in Death personified, we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that when we step outside the boundaries of civilization, alone, it is at Death we will stare. The isolation will have nothing to enrich our human decency. I’m not contradicting myself. It’s ok to wander, to become an individual, just as long as we stay within the boundaries of the civilized. We can learn from one another. It’s a chance to enrich our lives with the promise of cultural uniqueness and mindfulness. Heck, there will always be crimes, mischief, and wanton deviant behaviour—as certain as Death and taxes. But, we can contain it if we share with each other a human face. If not, Katy, bar the door. Because nothing will stop the jovial Baron of Darkness from waltzing right up to our doors, tipping his hat, while a carriage awaits us for a gentlemanly ride for all eternity—sooner rather than later.
Photo by Echo Grid on Unsplash
