This site is mainly about life. About celebrating and commemorating the lives and all the various journeys of life that we people have, and have had throughout time. An intricate part of that journey, of anyone’s life, is death, and the way each and one of us perceives it. This is about celebrating that fact. Not in any macabre manner, but out of respect for the life we were given.
The 2006 movie Fountain by Darren Aronofsky, starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. If you haven’t yet seen it, put it in your bucket list. Life and death are present in that film in the most intricate way every second of it, and the human existence shown in a mind-blowing manner - something the director is so good at!
For just as in that film, we tend to think of death as a loss. But just as in that film, death is something much bigger than that. Very much depending on your belief systems - even if you have just one fixed belief system carrying you through this life, or change it once or twice during it - death may mean different things to you in different stages of life. That mystical, once in a lifetime event to dread for life can be so wonderful. That once already experienced if you happen to be among people who came back from death having seen the light in the tunnel or whatever. But always that one event that all life, human and otherwise, is met with in stark contrast with what has been.
In funerals, people tend to wear black, at least in the Western cultures. Black is the color of the mourner, expressing the emptiness we feel, out of love for the one that has left us. But isn’t the color of death white? The color of the one that has left us. Anyone who has lost someone who departed after years of physical pain cannot help but appreciate the fact that there is no more pain. And the color of that is definitely not black. Black represents the pain of the living that mourn. Though what we actually mourn is our own loss. To celebrate the life of the deceased now at ease - even if death came far too early and in a totally unexpected or unacceptable manner - white is more becoming.
The phenomenon of death is in itself such a large concept, but yet we each can claim the right to have definite opinions of it as we all sooner or later will inherit it. We are all the best experts on ourselves - in life and death.
And as we all know, even within this one and the same life, there may be many beginnings and endings - and the endings may feel like small deaths to us. Letting or having to let go, starting anew, then ending again. In our quest and thirst for life, each ending may hold a promise of something new. And so it may be with the things beyond.
A lot has been written about journeys of death. The process of dying itself, and what might await us beyond. And like said, your own belief system - your opinions, expectations, even experiences - shape your attitude towards dying.
And the longer we live, the more we get to face it. And time becomes a concept that is almost ridiculous as we may feel like life is short, and yet a moment later feel like we’ve lived three hundred years. It is no wonder that the very old may feel like it is time to go - even if it still can be also fun to be around - especially if you aren’t burdened by anything else but the common realities of advanced age. That same subject that so many of us keep on avoiding and only face at the funerals and wakes of family members and friends, may become the one thing that is surprisingly welcome when it is time. But to believe in the continuing or discontinuing cycle of life and energy is like everything else a personal matter.
The below opening scene claimed by someone to be the best one in The Fountain reveals a lot about the film, so it can be somewhat of a spoiler. Yet it is a film that one can see several times without needing to know the exact next scene, and in the same breath we could say that the appearance of the apparent becomes just details mixed in the something supreme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNSsVJZmdhE
Here’s yet another take on dying, a courtesy of Natural Vita. After watching this beautiful video, you might think a bit differently about death. One story among many. Subjective, and colored by personal views, yet perhaps universal. But is it not more positive to believe - true or not - that there is something beyond death? Perhaps everybody should die at least once during the present life and then come back in order to really appreciate it.