Ours is a youth culture. It celebrates beauty and vitality, what's "hot and trendy." It harbors envy for those who appear to have it all: fame, wealth, youth and beauty and a level of personal independence and freedom from any financial constraints in life. The "haves" and the "have mores" live on easy street on Mt. Olympus. Of course we celebrate their fall too because no one human is allowed to live like a god forever. That would be too much.
The manufacturing industry, entertainment, marketing and franchising businesses all promote the values of youth and beauty, the exact anthithesis to death which is the end of everything, the ultimate downer, the ultimate bad trip from which there is no coming back. Hook, line and sinker the masses swallow the bait of youth, beauty, and wealth willingly, hoping for a piece of nirvana here on earth.
But if we really did integrate death on all levels down to our very core, life would take a dramatic shift. By treating life as a vending machine from which to extract "more for me", we take everything for granted, even people, along the way and complain when we're not getting what we want. Consequently we have lost touch with what is sacred in life. The headlines of our times reek of violence, scandal, greed, revenge, all of which are symptoms of the sacred having gone lost.
In Chinese medicine and Ayurveda much is made of our lower and higher selves and bringing these into alignment. If all we feed is our lower self then all we know is "what's in it for me" and our sacred self goes wandering away and thus we live unholy lives with the headlines only reflecting the end result.
But what would you do if someone told you that tomorrow could be your last day. There was no way of knowing ahead of time. But just tomorrow could be the last time you wake up. What would you do today? The first reaction most people have is a lower self indulgence. Go on a cruise. Travel. Spend all our money. Run up a credit card bill.
But our wisdom mind knows something else is being asked. What have I done with my life? Am I proud about what I have done, how I treated others? What is important to me? Why is it important?
Many seniors report in their older years a questioning of why they were so obsessed over this or that, realizing that what seemed so crucial so long ago is just trivial now. A distant aunt of mine who is high in her 80s recalled the bitter, tearful fights she had with her daughter who wanted to wear mini skirts back in the day. Today it's just an odd dream to her. Seniors report they wished they'd spent more time with loved ones and having some kind of hobby to make them feel creative. There is regret over lost opportunities due to fear or insecurity that, in old age, seem so trivial.
A youth driven culture does not entertain this notion because tomorrow is seen as extending infinitely into the future. Until the end arrives. But then it's too late.
I will insert a fable from one of my favorite authors, Franz Kafka.
A Little Fable
"Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into."
"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.
"Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into."
"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.
