Death might be the last word people want to face in their life. Even though we don't have our own death experience, we tend to feel fear or darkness or limitation from the word death. I believe none of us has ever written Death on our New Year's resolution. If you have ever done that before, you don't need to listen to my speech. I can't call you my master.
There are many wisdom quotes about Death.
"Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it." Haruki Murakami.
"We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will." Chuck Palahniuk.
"For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one." Kahlil Gibran.
"As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death." Leonardo da Vinci.
If you google it, you can swim in the sea of wisdom quotes about Death all day long. We can find lots of quotations about Death because Death is a crucial thing for all of us. This fact leads us to the idea that the way we meet our Death is imperatively vital to our life.
While I was preparing today's speech about Death, one sentence that I have read somewhere before came up in my mind.
"Everything has changed right after I decide to quit my job."
When I have read that sentence, I hit my lab right away, and I shouted in my mind," Yeaaa!"
Because that's what exactly I felt when I decided to quit my job.
And it brought me a long time forgotten memory again vividly.
On that night, after many years of hesitation, after many times of repetition of pushing send and close button on my mobile phone, the few times of ringtones seemed like ringing for years.
My company supervisor answered the phone and I said I would quit my job. He tried to persuade me to change my mind and said, "let's talk about it tomorrow". The silence that I felt after I hung up the phone was one of the weirdest moods that I have ever felt. So many emotions came up in my mind all together at once. And it was also a fantastic experience the following days.
Everything had amazingly changed. Everything. The colleague I hate, Overburdened work that made me all breathe a sigh all day, the sharp arrows that came from my Supervisor right after I sat on my chair in the office every morning. All has changed.
Since I decided to quit my job, I found myself that I didn't hate him anymore, that I stopped breathing a sigh, and that I didn't fear the arrows from my Supervisor anymore. It was an incredible experience. My whole world has changed over the night.
I felt so lightened. I felt like walking in the air. Feeling of freedom. So happy. Some parts of the lightness might have come from the hope that I would begin a new life. However, what was really important to me was from that lightened feeling was I indeed saw that I had lived with too many worries, greed, and wounds more than I thought. Much of my weight of life came to from my problems, such as unnecessary worries, ugly greed, and over-obsessed past wounds.
Don't you have a similar experience with me?
That experience made me think that I might be able to feel those lightened happy feelings again on the last day of my life. And if I live my life with Death every day, I might be able to feel those lightened happy feelings every day, releasing me from my unnecessary worries, ugly greed, and over-obsessed past wounds.
It would be so sad If hatred, despair, and fear were the emotions we feel on the last day of our life. But if we live a life with our daily Death, I believe, it will not happen to us.
So The secret of Death which makes us live an authentic life, that I have found was "To live live a life with Death every day." My dear friends, why don't you try to die every day?
I want to close my speech with the last sentence of our night prayer that all Catholic religious in the world are doing before going to sleep every day.
"Lord, grant us rest on this night and let us face a holy Death."
