Poetic Vision

Would you please take a quiet moment to quietly consider the following paragraph? Regardless of it's topic, would you commit to reading through to the very end? I'll make my point shortly thereafter. 

"Think continually how many physicians are dead after often contracting their eyebrows over the sick; and how many astrologers after predicting with great pretensions the deaths of others; and how many philosophers after endless discourses on death or immortality; how many heroes after killing thousands; and how many tyrants who have used their power over men's lives with terrible insolence as if they were immortal; and how many cities are entirely dead, so to speak, Helice and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and others innumerable. Add to the reckoning all whom thou hast known, one after another. One man after burying another has been laid out dead, and another buries him: and all this in a short time. To conclude, always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a little mucus to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew." 

(Marcus Aurelius, Meditations)

Everyone dies. That's about all that paragraph says.

Everyone dies. 

Now, stick with me, here. 

Be aware in this moment how you feel--right now, thinking about death--what judgment have you passed concerning death? Would you say you feel good or bad? Is death good or bad? 

"Well," one might think, "for someone suffering, death is good. He's not suffering any more." 

That's one way to look at it. But that's just it--perspective. About death. 

About anything. 

What captivates me about the above quote is that, in light of inevitable death that each person must face, the philosopher turns poet in the final lines. Why? Because some truths cannot merely be stated. Some truths must be illustrated. Painted. Read the last part once more: 

" . . . just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew."

The tree gives it's life in fruit therefore fruit is not for the tree but for whoever or whatever is NOT the tree. Fruit always falls AWAY from a tree, not into it. A tree does not consume it's own fruit. So when we live, we live for someone else. When we die, we die for someone else. Recently someone said, "once life is over it's not you who'll miss it. Your own death is something that happens to everyone else." It's downright biblical to call children the "fruit of our loins" --don't we give our lives cultivating the seed of our wobbly-bits?

Death and life are equally beautiful and this is the point the philosopher-turned-poet is trying to make (I think). Death is not dark. It's only dark when one looks in the dark. Bring a matter to light and look at it another way and find how beautiful it really is. 

Death happens to everyone, but it is the only experience that cannot be shared--it is unique. It is the great equalizer of the great and small, the mighty and weak, the rich and poor. Death is the end . . . and the beginning. 

So if someone dies, take a moment to consider who they are, how they got to be who they are--and look around, giving thanks that perhaps you may be part of the very tree from which that person grew. 

Then, after a time of celebration, prepare for your own passing: there's no time to kill on the golf course or watching TV. When you realize how little time you have, you also realize what really matters and what brings true joy.

It just takes a little poetic vision to see it.