If I Could Just Keep This in Mind...

"If you're not ready to die, you're not ready to live."  ~ quoted by the pastor speaking in my church tonight.

This is the essence of life.  Strip away everything else, and this is what it's all about.  If you can wake up every morning and be calm and content with the idea that today might be your last, if you can lay your head down on your pillow and close your eyes with no fear at the knowledge that you might not open them again to a new day, then you are ready for anything.

Think about what you are freed from.  Think about how much time we spend in fear of our tiny, fragile, finite little lives.  Think about what we deny ourselves, what experiences, what joys we shy away from.  If we were truly ready for the end whenever it came, if we held the peace of that readiness within ourselves, if we knew without doubt what came next, then we could step out into all the moments of wonder, terror, and magic that life places before us daily and look at them, drink them in, make them a part of ourselves. 

The fear of death becomes the fear of life.  We wrap ourselves in so many layers of protection trying to keep out the Grim Reaper that we insulate ourselves from everything else in the process, and we find, to borrow and adapt some words from Thoreau, when it comes time to die that we have not really lived at all.  Understanding comes too late in those brief moments at the end, and those who have allowed fear to prevent life wail and clutch at the could-have-beens.

We're told that we cannot add even one minute to our lives by worry, yet we continue daily to fret and struggle, to plan and to prevent, to try to paddle against the flowing river of the inevitable.  Instead, we should be paying attention to the scenery along the banks of this incredible mighty river as we go past, enjoying the ride, even the patches of whitewater, trusting that at the end of it all, all will be as it should be.  This sort of perfect peace is possible.  We just have to reach for it and get our pitiful little matchsticks paddles back inside the boat.