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Addressing the elephant in our lives
- By Allyn Reid
- •
- 06 Jul, 2022
A perspective on living while dying.
My mentor and friend is entering her last days here on earth.
We have been speaking almost everyday the last couple of weeks. She has been telling her story.
I've heard a lot of them before but now I pay attention to every. single. detail.
I notice timber of her voice. The tinkle in the beginning of her laugh. The hoarseness in her breath. The pauses. All these details inform me beyond the logistics of her story.
I've been making jokes: normal ones, they're death and dying jokes. I'm not actively being morbid. It's just that her life happens to be the perfect setup for these jokes. It's my nature to dole them out.
She laughs to the point of crying and running out of breath.
I'm not a career comedian so I break the universal rule in comedy: don't laugh at your own jokes. I laugh with her.
I realize the platitude circulating in the business and motivation world, "start with the end in mind" is doing this practice a disservice. They focus people towards exiting their companies or launching a product or making an impact on a made-up problem. This is crippling people of the perspective they really need to be having.
The primary perspective we should all be sitting every moment of our lives is that we are dying.
As you are reading this, I am dying. You are dying.
Every moment since our inception, we are dying. It is a universal truth that all humans die. All things that live eventually die.
Yet it is a process we are sorely undereducated about. When it comes to life, dying is the elephant in the room.
We all know somehow we will arrive at that moment. So why aren't we all talking about it all the time?
Why is it reserved for when someone else has passed when we ourselves are going through it also?
Death is not something that happens to us. It's something we are all moving towards. Every day we wake up, we are one blink closer to dying. Living is just a matter of our participation.
Are you actively dying or are you passively living?
Speaking to my mentor-friend daily, I witness how present she is in her living and in turn, her dying. She applies the same gusto to her dying process as I had seen her do when we worked together.
She does it all HER way.
Or else.
It's the mark of a soul in action. It's evidenced by her highlight list:
She knows precisely fullness of all that she is and is expressing it in everything she does. She's a walking phenomena (aka her soul signature).
It makes me notice how little people are actually living from their soul. The most vital operating system available to man, yet we know the least about.
So how does one begin to die actively?
You must have had enough of living passively.
Enough of showing up just to be seen.
Enough of half-assed efforts.
Enough of "someone else will take care of that"
Enough of "it will work out"
Enough of hanging on to stuff you don't really know anything about but pretend you do so that you can be interesting, or part of the conversation, or be cool, or whatever ego pandering you may/may not be aware you're doing.
Enough of identifying...with anything. Especially when you don't even know who are.
Enough of "if __x___ happens, then I will do ___y____.
Enough of plant medicines as some magic pill that fixes your bullshit. Newsflash: you're the carrier of the bullshit, and yes it's still there and oh, you're also drug user. Which brings me to...
Enough of going around the bush to find the magic fix.
These are all mind games. These are the main symptoms of living passively.
Living passively is robbing you of satisfaction.
Living passively is feeding off your personal power.
Living passively is stealing your peace.
Let's stop having our minds control our lives.
For once, let's allow for the soul to do it. This is the beginning of dying actively and participating fully.
First, let's acknowledge we have one.
We have been speaking almost everyday the last couple of weeks. She has been telling her story.
I've heard a lot of them before but now I pay attention to every. single. detail.
I notice timber of her voice. The tinkle in the beginning of her laugh. The hoarseness in her breath. The pauses. All these details inform me beyond the logistics of her story.
I've been making jokes: normal ones, they're death and dying jokes. I'm not actively being morbid. It's just that her life happens to be the perfect setup for these jokes. It's my nature to dole them out.
She laughs to the point of crying and running out of breath.
I'm not a career comedian so I break the universal rule in comedy: don't laugh at your own jokes. I laugh with her.
I realize the platitude circulating in the business and motivation world, "start with the end in mind" is doing this practice a disservice. They focus people towards exiting their companies or launching a product or making an impact on a made-up problem. This is crippling people of the perspective they really need to be having.
The primary perspective we should all be sitting every moment of our lives is that we are dying.
As you are reading this, I am dying. You are dying.
Every moment since our inception, we are dying. It is a universal truth that all humans die. All things that live eventually die.
Yet it is a process we are sorely undereducated about. When it comes to life, dying is the elephant in the room.
We all know somehow we will arrive at that moment. So why aren't we all talking about it all the time?
Why is it reserved for when someone else has passed when we ourselves are going through it also?
Death is not something that happens to us. It's something we are all moving towards. Every day we wake up, we are one blink closer to dying. Living is just a matter of our participation.
Are you actively dying or are you passively living?
Speaking to my mentor-friend daily, I witness how present she is in her living and in turn, her dying. She applies the same gusto to her dying process as I had seen her do when we worked together.
She does it all HER way.
Or else.
It's the mark of a soul in action. It's evidenced by her highlight list:
- Traded on the wall street floor AND built a bank without a college degree (during a time when women were usually secretaries).
- Sat on the board for major hospitals and charities.
- Sued the government about land and animal preservation by herself, and won.
- Cured herself of cancer.
- Cured herself of Type 2 diabetes. With food.
- Has read 3K+ books in her lifetime (I tried counting and lost track).
- Earned big money, lost big money, and given away even bigger money.
She knows precisely fullness of all that she is and is expressing it in everything she does. She's a walking phenomena (aka her soul signature).
It makes me notice how little people are actually living from their soul. The most vital operating system available to man, yet we know the least about.
So how does one begin to die actively?
You must have had enough of living passively.
Enough of showing up just to be seen.
Enough of half-assed efforts.
Enough of "someone else will take care of that"
Enough of "it will work out"
Enough of hanging on to stuff you don't really know anything about but pretend you do so that you can be interesting, or part of the conversation, or be cool, or whatever ego pandering you may/may not be aware you're doing.
Enough of identifying...with anything. Especially when you don't even know who are.
Enough of "if __x___ happens, then I will do ___y____.
Enough of plant medicines as some magic pill that fixes your bullshit. Newsflash: you're the carrier of the bullshit, and yes it's still there and oh, you're also drug user. Which brings me to...
Enough of going around the bush to find the magic fix.
These are all mind games. These are the main symptoms of living passively.
Living passively is robbing you of satisfaction.
Living passively is feeding off your personal power.
Living passively is stealing your peace.
Let's stop having our minds control our lives.
For once, let's allow for the soul to do it. This is the beginning of dying actively and participating fully.
First, let's acknowledge we have one.
