Cosmos of Kate

I heard a quote yesterday: “Except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death”

This brought another quote to mind for me: “Ignorance is bliss.”

Oh what life could be like if we were but creatures living in blissful ignorance of our own impermanence.

I think about death. A lot. More than I should probably admit, but… well… there it is. I have always had a healthy fascination with death. I say ‘healthy’ because I do not wish to die, but the idea of it, the unknown of it, the permanence and inevitability of it, draw me in like few other topics can. What is the afterlife like? Is there one, or do we just cease to exist when we die?

A very dear friend of mine posed it to me this way once, which I felt was quite profound: Before you were born you did not exist. When you die, you will cease to exist. I found this idea to be oddly comforting.

The issue we have with death and the meaning of life does not come from the act of living, of being alive, it comes from our consciousness, our understanding that one day we will end. We never think about why we didn’t exist before we were born. No one ever talks about where we came from, only where we go when we die. Why is this? Where did we come from? If we have souls, as many believe, or a permanent form of energy that exists within us, which I believe, where did it come from, where was it before it was in me as I am now? And where will it go when I, my physical, earthly form, am gone?

I saw an interview with someone I deeply admire recently and they were asked what they thought the meaning of life was. Love. The core of what it means to be human is to learn how and be able to love. To form relationships, care about each other, help one another. This is why we are here.

I also heard somewhere recently of someone who had a near death experience and during their brief time in the afterlife, came to understand that the meaning of life is to learn to love, and that the afterlife, or at least the next plane of existence, is filled with love. What if we are put here, over and over again, life after life, to learn to love wholly and unconditionally?

I recall the first time I saw a deceased body. It was my grandmother in an open casket at her funeral. I was fourteen and she was the first of my loved ones to pass away. I recall my mother asking if I wanted to see her, to which I said yes. But when I got to the casket and looked down, my immediate reaction was relief. It wasn’t her. She wasn’t there. It was a very profound feeling of simply looking at a body, a vessel that used to contain my grandmother. No part of her was there at all. I also recently saw this same reaction portrayed in a movie that I love, in which someone looks down at their deceased loved one and says “That’s not him, he’s not here.” But situations such as this beg the question: where are they?

Shortly before my grandmother passed, she woke up unexpectedly from a coma proclaiming that she had “come back.” From where? We do not know, and we’re not meant to know. Life is a journey, at death you have arrived, and the afterlife (or lack thereof) is the destination. But we don’t have a GPS for the journey through life. We don’t have a voice telling us we made a wrong turn and it’s recalculating the route for us. If we make a wrong turn, sometimes that’s the end of our journey, or sometimes it takes us on a different path we didn’t expect. But we are our own navigators of life, we are responsible for ourselves and how we live, what we accomplish, of who and how we love.

I am not afraid of death. The idea is actually very comforting to me. Being alive, seeing other people’s lives, watching the world turn right now, I am entirely convinced that whatever awaits us after we draw our last breath, will be a very welcome reprieve from the harshness and brutality of our current reality. But the point of life, the meaning of life, if you will, is to leave having found, experienced, and bestowed all forms of love. Live well, and love fearlessly.