28 - Do something death-defying
To die is a verb that spontaneously arouses dread within us. Everything in our culture has made of death a terrible event. Religions promise final judgement followed by a decidedly ill-defined afterlife. Modern science suggests that we can prolong human life spans indefinitely, making death itself seem like a disease.
Whether you live for 30 or 300 years, when you have ceased to feel the wonder and magic of existence, you are obsolete as far as nature is concerned. What is worse than living like a zombie? Dead inside, going through the movements of life. Your human experience has ended for all practical purposes and it is time to move on.
People of all creeds and backgrounds who have near death experiences describe it as an immersion in bright light, a communion beyond words, and a feeling of boundless love. If we take this to be a mind-induced hallucination it is nonetheless significant and remarkable that myriad persons have the same experience. It is an experience that has also been detailed in numerous mystical writings, from the Tibetan book of the Dead to Plato. From where do such universal dream archetypes emerge?
The dread of death is the mass mental disease. Such dread is ill-informed, disconnected from the stream of on-going life. For death implies life, just as life implies death. Surrendering to this truth is the only way to trump death. What you can know in your final moment of life is beyond what your lifetime of learning and thinking has thus brought you. That final moment is a great gift, and gifts are a matter for celebration, not for mourning.
What is important now is not your own death, unless you know it to be imminent. Rather, it is how you feel about death, during your own life. Thanks to death, you can light up your life with a burning sense of purpose instead of floating listlessly forever. Thanks to death, you can taste the immortality of the human spirit in direct contrast with decay. Death is a change of state, and change is the only constant in life. It follows that life without death would be non-life.
Change how you view death, and watch your life change.
Do something death-defying. Not something rash or suicidal, but something that allows you to confront one of your great fears. In a figurative sense, you must die before you can truly live (even within your current life). In other words, the degree to which you will feel fully alive depends directly on how much you face up to those fears that compromise your unique purpose in life, most often called your dreams.
Identify one, just one of your fears, and act. The one will lead to two, and three shall set you free.
Do something death-defying, that your dreams may come to life!