One day – on an ordinary day just like today – we are going to die.
The fear of death drives us to strive for great achievements and it is also the source of many regrets and sorrows. The modern culture in which we live does not encourage us to face death while we still feel very much alive. And we try to avoid thinking about it at all costs. Woody Allen said in one of his movies:
“It’s not that I’m afraid of dying; it’s just that I don’t want to be there when it happens!”
Denying the reality of death can leave us vulnerable to fear and regret. But when we courageously face the transient nature of our existence and acknowledge that everything, including our own lives, will perish, we can liberate ourselves from trivial worries, gain clarity on our priorities, and gain a deeper appreciation for life in general. This helps us to be present in the moment and experience life fully.
Confronting ourselves with the truth of our impermanence and mortality holds the potential for our personal growth and transformation.
Gather the moments that make up our lives
We imagine ourselves as we hold a pile of sand in our hands. As we open our hands, we observe the grains slipping through our fingers.
Now we consider all the moments that made up our lives. Each one is precious and unique, and we embrace them fully.
We remember the happy moments full of laughter, love and joy, and we remember also the moments of sadness, the moments of our successes and accomplishments and our shortcomings and the painful lessons , that life has taught us
We now visualize how we gather these moments in our hands like a pile of sand.
We imagine how we slightly open our hands. One by one these moments slip through our fingers like the grains of sand.
And as these moments slip away from us, we imagine how our lives dissolve and disappear with each grain.
Surrender to the flow of life.
To live means to die.
Breathe in we feel the air filling your lungs. We Accept the impermanence of all things.
Breathe out. We feel the air leaving our body. We let go our attachment to the memories that shaped us.
This breath, this moment, is life. It is fleeting. It comes; it goes.
Each breath we take is a reminder of the transient nature of our existence.
This isn’t meant to be morbid but to foster a deeper appreciation for the present moment. For in knowing we will die, we truly begin to live. We understand that we do not fear death itself, but that we have not lived. We carry this sense of peace and acceptance with us.
One day on an ordinary day just like today, we are going to die.
Except today isn’t an ordinary day, because today we are alive