THE MEANING OF YOUR LIFE
Dedicate your life to love today, for death is near. This is not depressing, this is the Way, this has always been the Way.
Death comes to all of us, the saint and the sinner alike, the rich and the poor, the amoeba and the Milky Way; she comes in the night or in the brilliant light of day, she comes unexpectedly, often without warning; she has no use for your plans, your dreams of what might be. She is ruthlessly unsentimental, honest, a free spirit, a lover, and hopelessly misunderstood.
She will switch off the movie in the middle of any scene, any scene at all. She does not discriminate. The great love scene, the scene of unbearable ecstasy, the scene where everything is at last working out, the scene in which death seems so distant, she will come in the middle of the scene and she will whisper in your ear, “This is it… Let go…”
Without her, life would lose all its meaning, for meaning is made only in relation to or from death and finitude and boundedness. Infinite nothing cannot mean anything to infinite nothing. Awareness has no meaning unto itself. Death grounds us in life’s rhythms.
If we lived forever, we would come to take everything for granted. Every encounter with a friend or lover would lose its preciousness. We would have infinite time to make amends, to heal, to give what we have to give. There would be no need or desire to touch our grief, our deepest longings, meet our wounds. We could put it all off for ten thousand years. The words we longed to speak today, the truth we longed to tell, we could abandon indefinitely and it wouldn’t matter. Our days would lose their bittersweet urgency. We would disconnect from the mystery of our hearts.
The ego, with its fears, would reign supreme.
Infinite time would render life in many ways unliveable, the movie unwatchable, the story deathly dull or too horrible to contemplate. We would lose ourselves in the contemplation of the real possibility of pain without end, sorrows without cessation, no way out.
For many, the thought of the end actually makes the day bearable, brings relief. The knowledge of our impermanence can even invite a sweetness into our days, and can help us connect with gratitude, that wonderful balm without which life is cold and empty.
Finitude is not the enemy. The body and its limitations, its secretions and boundaries are not our own, yet they are teachers of grace too.
Finitude within infinity. Boundaries dancing in unboundedness. An equation that the human mind has never been able to comprehend. And never needs to.
Death is coming, so dedicate your life now to that which never dies – love, compassion, and a gentle presence. Expand into the vastness of love; take a universe into your heart. Turn towards the moment; attention makes it sacred.
And as the movie switches off, perhaps you will remember that whether you loved or hated the movie, it was a gift. And then, loved or hated, the entire movie itself will be reduced to a single memory, and that single thought form will disappear into nothingness. Did anything happen at all? Is this a death, or a birth? Falling into unknowing. Undivided from the mystery. Back to the great Womb from which you were never separate, released from the ravages of time.
You loved, friend, and you walked your path, and sometimes you stumbled, and you didn’t resolve everything you expected to resolve before the end. There are tasks left undone, questions left unanswered, words that were never spoken, final scenes left unseen. But perhaps total resolution was the lie, and your days were only there to be lived, not wrapped up neatly.
Focus on what was given, not what was taken away, nor what will never be.
You loved, you tried, you did more than your best, you touched others and were touched deeply in return, you inhabited your days, the days that were given, you laughed and you cried, and none of it is any less meaningful now because it is ending.
The light of attention is brighter now, the curiosity stronger, the presence warmer, the intimacy deeper. It was only ever about the journey, friend, it was never about reaching the destination, getting to the finish line. You are too courageous for destinations, too alive for resolution.
The meaning of your life is your life, inhabited.
– Jeff Foster