An outcome you cannot argue with

Death & Life by Darius twin


A wide range of psychotherapeutic, spiritual, and extreme sports traditions all have one thing in common. In fact we all have this in common, and no it is not skin, or taxes. It is death.

In our culture death is a strange subject. We are all going to die, but it is not something many of us like to think about very much. Naturally we get reminded fairly regularly as people we know come to the ends of their lives.

We also get to see plenty of death in the media, usually at an abstractly comfortable distance. It could be in the news, or in a TV series where the bad guys are little more than targets for the hero.

Now I have no idea what happens when we die, though I have met plenty of people who have beliefs in this area. Given this uncertainty about our only certainty, living people use death in a number of ways.

Obviously death gets used as a threat, which works less well if you believe that you get some kind of celestial five star service on the other side.

Others use death as a leveler - it links Presidents and beggars, it is something we share, a common facet of our humanity. It can bring us together.

The extreme sports people use the imminent possibility of death to add spice to life. People nearing the ends of their lives often talk of the extraordinary delight they have in the most ordinary things that they encounter.

We can also use death as a way to examine our priorities and values. As Buddhists put it 'the only certainty in life is death, and the time of our death is uncertain. Knowing that, what shall I do now?'

As a recent training came to a close, I used a meditation on death to mark its ending. It is something that I learned from the fool while we were training people in a petrochemical company. I don't know where he learned it, he may have simply made it up.

Some of the students asked if I could record some the meditations that we use, because they find it easier to follow this way. It seems a little perverse that the first one I record should be on death, but as Stephen Covey puts it, begin with the end in mind. Also I recognize that it is something that I could benefit from doing more often.



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