The intersection of living well and dying well.
It is clear, 80%+ of my life is in the rearview mirror. With the possible exception of apologies and repentance, it is what it is, but it is not done.
In our final years (second half), according to Richard Rohr, our spiritual awareness moves from adherence to a belief system to a humble inner knowing. Life in all its ups and downs becomes the great spiritual teacher. The unsatisfactoriness of human existence creates in us a kind of spiritual homesickness.
In the crucible of inner awareness and decay we can live well.
I am finding that to be my experience.
The following quotes give insight into the dynamic of living well – dying well:
By “coming to terms with life” I mean: the reality of death has become a definite part of my life; my life has, so to speak, been extended by death, by my looking death in the eye and accepting it, by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or the refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich [life].
An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941–1943
The awareness of death tends to make life’s trivialities seem…trivial. “Cancer cures psychoneuroses,” one of Irvin Yalom’s therapy patients told him. “What a pity I had to wait till now, till my body was riddled with cancer, to learn how to live.”
Lazear Ascher writes in her memoir Ghosting.
At the end, their life together was stripped down to the essentials. “There were many times when we felt blessed. It was as though certain death had granted us an extra life.”When Bob got really sick, Barbara brought him home from the hospital so his final days would be more humane. She showered him with love and attention. “Dying was intimate, and I drew close,” Ascher writes. “We were single-minded, welded together in the process of this long leave-taking.”
How to Know a Person – David Brooks
When we avoid thoughts of death, we unconsciously assume that tomorrow will look a lot like today, so we can do tomorrow what we could do today. But when we focus on death, that increases the stakes at play in the present, and clarifies what we should do with our time.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/05/death-memento-mori-happiness/674158/
If you insist on ignoring your own demise, you are likely to make decisions that cause you to sleepwalk through life. You may not be dead yet, but you’re not fully alive either.
According to ars morendi temptations emerge as death nears — lack of faith, despair , impatience , spiritual pride , avarice . Death circumstances then wer an ever present reality, often coming prematurely Today’s death circumstances are much different; death is rigorously avoided. Extended life expectancy, prolonged dying experiences facilitated by medical and technological advances, extend the dying process. To die well, requires understanding of and resolutions to the temptations.
Despite diligent efforts to avoid death, fear of death is a subconscious reality. Lack of faith, despair, impatience, spiritual pride, and avarice, are witness to the fear of death.
Tim Keller’s reflection on receiving news of terminal cancer illustrates the point.
One of the first things I learned was that religious faith does not automatically provide solace in times of crisis. A belief in God and an afterlife does not become spontaneously comforting and existentially strengthening. Despite my rational, conscious acknowledgment that I would die someday, the shattering reality of a fatal diagnosis provoked a remarkably strong psychological denial of mortality. Instead of acting on Dylan Thomas’s advice to “rage, rage against the dying of the light,” I found myself thinking, What? No! I can’t die. That happens to others, but not to me. When I said these outrageous words out loud, I realized that this delusion had been the actual operating principle of my heart.
If we don’t accept the reality of death, we don’t need these beliefs to be anything other than mental assents. A feigned battle in a play or a movie requires only stage props. But as death, the last enemy, became real to my heart, I realized that my beliefs would have to become just as real to my heart, or I wouldn’t be able to get through the day. Theoretical ideas about God’s love and the future resurrection had to become life-gripping truths, or be discarded as useless.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/tim-keller-growing-my-faith-face-death/618219/
Dying well and living well are two sides of the same coin.
STILL ON THE JOURNEY