9 NO FEAR
The Gift of the Journey
Life is a gift that we never fully unwrap while we’re living it. Often, when people are seeking the meaning of life, they talk about their “death bed” and how they might look back on their life from that place, knowing this was it—it was almost over.
I notice how when someone we know dies—someone not in our inner sanctum of circles—their death “puts things into perspective.” Celebrity deaths in particular have this effect. The surge of interest in them and their art after they pass. This sweeping increase in appreciation of them now that they are gone. I suppose it happens at funerals too, a person being appreciated in a way they weren’t in everyday life. It’s bigger--and in ways, easier—to feel and see their impact on our own lives, and the lives of all the other people that knew them after they die.
It puts things in perspective: we’re all going to die. Except that we already know that. So why can’t we have that perspective all the time? And if we did, how would go about our day, knowing that our life is going to end?
Our time is limited. This residence inside this body, thinking with this mind, loving the people we love, eating the food we eat, spending the day the way we just spent it—is our last chance to do so. Life is a wrapped gift that we carry all the way through the ride of our life. And inside the box is the journey itself.
