Mindfulness

Don’t Let The Prospect Of Death Ruin Your Life

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Death is like a dark thundercloud on the distant horizon. You watch it moving ever closer, implacable, and you realize there’s nothing you can do to halt its eventual arrival. Sooner or later your sunny picnic is going to get ruined.

But does that mean you should let it ruin your picnic right now, while the bad weather is still far away, while it’s still bright and sunny out? That’s exactly what happens to many of us. We let the knowledge of our future demise infect our present circumstances, our happiness is transformed into fear. We think feel and act as if the thundercloud were already overhead.

Don’t let the prospect of death ruin your life. Your death is a foregone conclusion but what you do with your life is still very much up in the air and very much up to you. It’s still sunny out, why not let yourself enjoy the weather? The key is cultivating the mindful attitude, consciously bringing yourself fully to the here and now in order to inhabit this moment not some moment down the line.

When that moment of death comes it will be time to inhabit it, you won’t have any choice, but why keep adding the unnecessary pain of inhabiting it now when it’s still a far off eventuality? Instead realize that where life is death is not, not unless you grant it permission to take up permanent residence in your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.