A Glimpse Of Death Opens A Man’s Eyes

The wisdom behind the creation of human life omitted a very important element: DEATH.

Day-to-day existence is too accommodating. Too comfortable. It lulls us into complacency. We become too much at ease with our life. Too accustomed to our surroundings. Too much a part of the fabric.

We are here for only a short time. But we live sprawled across the scaffolding of our lives as if we are going to be here forever. And because we feel this way, we have no appreciation for life. NONE. Everything is so easy to take for granted.

The human being, by virtue of his most prevalent mental state, is a creature of the 12th hour. Because he forever lives within 11:59, he rarely feels the urgency of 12:00.

But occasionally something shakes him. A sudden death. A calamity of some sort brings things into sudden perspective. He is shaken from his complacency and he is forced to confront the moment. But eventually, the drama of the event fades, and so does he, back into his well-worn existence.

Because we become so seduced by inertia, few of us ever really LIVE.

Every human being would be blessed to experience a near-death experience every six months. This would keep him on the edge.

Feeling close to death makes one IMMEDIATELY feel close to life. The inertia suddenly disappears and the human being breathes for the first time in years. He sees the greenery of the grass and the hardness of the floor and the slow and gentle movement of the clouds. He discovers that he is alive after all. He discovers that before he is ANYTHING ELSE, he is FIRST AND FOREMOST a living organism. A piece of life.

Coasting through life without anything to shake us from our reverie is a curse. We proceed through our daily existence as programmed zombies, bound by habit, and enslaved to emotion.

Imagine with all your heart, for the next five minutes, that you were going to die at 11pm tomorrow night. That these would be the last twenty four hours of your life.

Try it.

What do you immediately discard as ridiculous luxuries of the zombified life? What do you immediately cherish? How does your existence change?

It is only under the prospect of death that we begin to live. An abundance of life blinds us to its gift. It is too much in supply. And, thus, we cherish it not.

The vast majority of us human beings are DEAD.

It takes nothing less than the power of death to compel us to live.