Today's
Meditation:
I have
absolutely no idea what happens to us when we die. I
do know what people from many different faiths believe
happens, many different possibilities, but the bottom line
is that I don't know anything for sure. I
have my thoughts and ideas on the subject, but they're
simply that: thoughts and ideas. I wouldn't
even call them beliefs because I'm so unsure of their
veracity. And I'm fine with that. My focus
while I'm here on this planet is to live as well as I can,
and that takes all my time and effort, to be honest.
When
I think of death, as I do from time to time, I prefer to
think of it as Norman portrays the concept-- going home to
a loving someone. It may be completely wrong, but
that's fine. I'm not going to fill my head with
thoughts of judgment and retribution, and I'm not going to
worry because I don't know what happens-- neither of those
strategies offers me anything positive at all. I
prefer to just think about death in the most positive ways
that I can because there really is no way of knowing
what's going to happen.
When
we think about what we're going to do tomorrow, we try to
think in the most positive ways possible. I'm going
to have fun, I'm going to do something positive, I'm going
to do great on that test or that presentation or that
interview. If we dread tomorrow and we spend time
thinking of how bad it may be, we're setting ourselves up
for a bad day AND we're wasting much time today that could
be spent on much more useful pursuits than dreading an
unknown tomorrow.
Death
is death. It awaits us all, and it plays no
favorites. I can think about death as something
dreadful, or I can think of it as something positive--
that's up to me. The way that I think of
it, of course, won't change death at all, but it can
change my own life today when I'm not afraid of something
about which I know absolutely nothing. I can hope
for a peaceful, calm death, and I can hope for something
positive after death. If I do this, then my today
isn't going to be wasted on negative thoughts about
something that I truly don't know anything about.
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