7

So here’s a trip for you...
At my recent zen meeting, our teacher led us in a profoundly moving meditation that had me weeping. We were instructed to lie down, get comfortable, cover up, and relax. Koshin then asked us to imagine being told we had 7 years to live. Who would we tell? Who would we not tell? Why? How would we want to spend those last years in this lifetime? We had a few minutes to mentally answer the questions. Every few minutes we were given new time frames in which to ask ourselves these same questions.
If we had 7 months left
7 weeks
7 days
7 hours
7 minutes
7 seconds

This was the rawest mental exercise I’ve ever done. I personally have never thought about my last few seconds of breath. The very last thing the body ever does is exhale. At that point it’s all gone, all of it. All the ideas, stories, plans, regrets, concerns, physical functions, desires, frustrations, betrayals, hopes etc that have lived inside us have jumped ship long before. The exhale outlives all else. That’s how powerful breath is. It’s the last thing to stay inside us until it too must go. What state do I want to be in during those very last few seconds?

The lists I had for whom to tell and whom not to tell were mostly the same. I am pretty certain of my core people. I know who I’d want to handle my healthcare proxy, my departing soul, my funeral/burial, and who I’d want to be around. One person who I did not think I’d tell prior to this exercise popped up as someone I would indeed want to know. On the flip side, someone who I previously did think I’d tell in such an extreme situation no longer feels right to include. The clarity born from exercises like these is so important. The self knowledge gained here leads to some of the most valuable insights we can possibly have into not just our deaths, but our lives. If we are so sure how we’d want to spend our time and with whom, why aren’t we doing that now? Why wait to narrow down what’s most important? Personally, I want to die the same way I want to be alive.
I really recommend finding some quiet time to sit with yourself, amidst this time of unavoidable reminders of our fragile mortality, and contemplate each of these questions. It could lead to strong, yet kind directives in letting your loved ones know how important they are to you, to the kinds of days you desire to have yet have been putting off, and to understanding that time is not up to us. We simply cannot control it. None of us should assume we have many years left to live the life we want, one that we can be proud of. It’s just not so. Live the same life you would now as you would in your later years, so that if you got hit by a bus today you’d know you gave it your all. Let this global pandemic be your teacher. It’s here at the front of the universal classroom. It’s speaking. Are we texting and checking social media, or are we paying attention to this colossal lesson that defies hemispheres, ages, ethnicities, and time zones?

I suggest just starting to ask yourself, and to begin to seek clarity about life by befriending the concept of death. We don’t choose to be born or to die. But we get to choose what happens in between those two events.