Dying Wishes and Living Realities
It's funny, this past week someone I've had a fleeting crush on mentioned the song that they wanted played at their wedding, which is something I haven't thought about in a while. Then this weekend, I was sitting around thinking that I'm no longer at the age where I think about what song I want played at my wedding; instead I'm thinking about what poem I want read at my funeral, Mary Oliver's A Leaf and a Cloud, if you happen to be the one to find me. (smile) Yes--the entire thing.Life is very short. I'd like to be happy with someone; but it's more important to be happy with myself because that's all I can seem to manifest. Heartbreak is devastating--and maybe I can't go there again--or maybe it's just not meant to be. So, I think about a good death. Why so many thoughts of death on a beautiful Spring Monday Morning, you ask? Well, Saturday I saw three people who reminded me of an old friend, Ben. Ben who committed suicide several years ago--and I still can't quite seem to grasp that he's no longer on the planet. It got me thinking....
I spent many many years as a misanthrope, malcontent, generally miserable person. At the height of my youth I was either living like there was no tomorrow or wishing there wouldn't be one. Life is very short--and I wasted much of it--and continue to...old habits die hard. I see people who seem to grasp life by the throat and wish I had that zeal, that enthusiasm, that gusto--for lack of a better word. Instead, I've been a bit of a somnambulant--sleep walker.
I was sitting in gurdwara yesterday and this question kept coming into my head: What are you doing here? At first I thought it meant, here in the gurdwara, a Sikh, a yogi, a single woman. And then I realized it was just that same old question that's been haunting me my entire life: What am I doing here? But you see, this is fundamentally the wrong question. And my disciplined mind recognizes that--but the old habit dies hard--and my misanthrope wants to return there to that empty, meaningless question. How do I make it work for me, instead of sapping me of every ounce of energy I have left?
Change it. What do I want to do here? The only answer I have is to sing and to laugh--and possibly, with luck, to love. I suppose that is my living and dying wish.
May you ask the right questions.
May you receive an answer
from your deepest truth.
May you live a good life
and may you die a good death.
May you awaken
and may you laugh, always laugh.
Sat Nam.
posted by Sat Purkh Kaur Khalsa @ 8:30 AM
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