What is the measure of death? The physically animated can be as dead as Johnny come lately mentally and spiritually. The death of the heart and the soul is far more agonizing than the complete absence of conscious awareness and physical vitality. This being the case, what should the lifeless of mind and spirit fear concerning their physical demise.
It is true that total oblivion is a fearful concept to ponder until we that are top-side are thoughtful that collapse formed our conception and that we wallow in fleetingness. The brief is short, and the short is even briefer for those of us that are least in mind and spirit. The tiniest drop makes the biggest splash and the pigeon chokes the mule. Who is to say which emptiness is greater, the light or the shadow that produces the light.
In a day that came and in a moment that went nothing happened. The mind is in shut-down mode, and the eyes are open. Tiny unseen bugs are biting the heck out of me and driving me insane. The smallest of the spiders are the ones that will send you to the coffin. What are the standards to place on life and what gauges need to be applied to evaluate death?
Being alive is the only reality that the living knows so the thought of ceasing to be alive is an unknown reality. Death has no comparison to being asleep because in sleep we usually dream, even if we do not remember that we have dreamed in our sleep. The living covets death but is fearful of the unknown and the dead walks in an animated body and will not die.
Ten tongues sing the same song, and one fell from the bottom of the non-stepped stepladder. And who should fear death when death is the natural state of the living? Is there anyone who is alive? What do we have to compare that which we call life against? The orbit is not an orbit until it makes an orbit and who is to say what an orbit is.
Losing a loved one to death is sad and losing yourself in yourself is even worse. Misery and confusion simply adore life, and there are no feelings of pain when there is no mind processing it. The ant climbed to the top of the mountain, and the hill across the street collapsed for no reason.
In death, there is, well who knows. In life, there is the constant presence of death breathing down your nose. In the morning there will be no morning because tomorrow was here yesterday and yesterday will not come in the morning. Twenty tons of horse manure equals a single fleeting thought during a day.
And so, it is that the balancing fact of life is to place death within its proper hierarchy and that is within that gaping hole that troubles the mind concerning the unknown. Goodbye death, referred to as life, and hello life, referred to as death.
