Death is the road to awe
Autor: mitsuohara | Publicado: 2012-02-15T06:57:00-02:00

This post will be in English. The reason? I feel like it...

So theses days I've been thinking a lot about life and death. Both in lyrical and literal ways.

What does "life" means? What "death" represents?

In our hyper-modern society, in which the progress of science and technology is constantly expanding our knowledge and creating resources that makes living easier and better, it strikes me as odd that we're so afraid of dying - but I would rather say we're also afraid of living.

It seems like a paradox, but in fact it's a matter of cause and effect. We always had the fear of death. Life became easier, we are living longer and we are cheating death better. But that's it, we are only CHEATING death. Death is unavoidable, so it still scares us.

But what is death? Some say death is the end, while others go as far as saying it's the beginning of something new. Some religions and cultures face death as merely the end of a cycle.

I believe death it's all that. Is an end, and hence, it's also the possibility of a new beginning. It's a step towards the unknown.

So why death still scares us so much? Because death represents uncertainty. We're used to grasp to our convictions, to our comfort places, to our routines, to people. We feel we NEED those things in order to live, we feel safe, we feel meaningful. And death has the power of taking away all that.

But nowadays we exist in a chaotic world. Humanity is going through one of its most disturbed, yet wonderful phases it ever faced. We have it all: the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly.

I think most people don't think about death on a daily basis. And it's common to hear people say they "are not afraid of death". But that's a lie, know why? You only know fear when you face it. It's easy to be fearless when you "know" (even if it's unconsciously) that your chances of dying are small. Real fear only comes with real danger.

Anyway, that's the literal death I was talking about - the decease of the body. We have built sufficient artifacts and tactics to preserve our physical integrity and that's why "death" it's not a daily, recurring concern to most healthy people.

We're living under an era of dictatorships: of beauty, of happiness, of social status, of money. You have to "be part" of those systems, you have to "belong" to certain groups so people can identify you, you have to be labeled and so we adapt, we learn how to "sell" ourselves - how to behave in order to be seen and treated the way we want. All this pressure put upon us acts like the "pressure" Nature itself exercises over all living beings: only the fittest wins.

Our fear of dying became the fear of failure, the fear of "being nobody" - being nobody is like not existing at all in this world, so it's pretty much like being "dead". And death being both "the end" and "the unknown", we tend to overreact when facing the end of things that are dear to us, the things we're used to, the things we hold on to.

With so many fear of all "deaths" that could happen in our lives, we live in fear and fear life - because the world is so dangerous and you can always get hurt.

But all things must pass. Everything must die, even though everything  has its own time. So why deny? Why fight against it? Why blame? Why  suffer? Why live in constant fear?

We just have to accept it. Death is part of Life - as life is part of death. Death is what gives life its meaning.

We must let things die. Only then there can be new life.