Are you Dying to Live?

Would you be willing to die, in order to have the experience of really living?  

Would you willingly suffer, in order to experience true happiness?  

                         

Would you sacrifice your opinions and lose yourself in order to find yourself?

These questions surfaced as I have been pondering the prevalence of moral decay in our society.

The only comfort I can find is in the fact that life and death are a never ending continuum. Each exhalation we concede is a death, each inhalation we grasp, a rebirth. Every second we’re alive here on Earth, we first die and then we are born again. It would be futile to debate over which is better - the in- or the out-breath. The two polarities exist because of each other. We see this tension of opposites in everything. In every good deed there is a negative, and equally in every bad deed there is a positive.

No amount of joy can be appreciated in the absence of suffering, and yet we all try and avoid suffering as though it were the plague.

Love has no greater platform than that of forgiving some unloving deed. To know unconditional love, we have to experience and embrace our darkness, finding absolute acceptance and non-judgement of all our repressed attributes. We are, all of us, neither good nor bad, but merely a complimentary blend of all our cumulative good and bad feelings, thoughts, imaginings and doings. We each have the capacity for greed and compassion, for love and hatred.

There are no bad people on this planet, just some whom have had less experience than others.

Think about it. If I was brought up in the lap of luxury, having all my physical, material, mental and emotional needs met, how would I have an understanding of what it is like to live a life of deprivation and suffering? How would I know what hunger, intense cold or physical pain feel like? Without ever having laboured physically, would I have empathy for those who toil relentlessly earning just enough for their next meal? How would I know that I am privileged and blessed unless someone or something challenged my ignorant complacency?

Sometimes the best learned lessons are those in which we lose what we had, in order to really appreciate what we took for granted.

We live in challenging times, where corruption, dishonesty and inequality have infested humanity, like silent viruses.

I ask myself what I am doing about this. Nothing. And that is the saddest of confessions.

Aside from complaining or sticking my head in the sand and turning a blind eye to it, I am numb, like the majority of humanity, too afraid of sacrificing any of my creature comforts. 

My inner complaining is causing me to become resentful, but nonetheless I am frozen in my inability to act. 

What will cause me to take action? Probably only the threat of mine or my loved ones’ safety. And that is exactly why through inaction the decay will prevail.  Are we going to turn the other cheek and surrender to the abuse and misconduct of those who are living unconsciously?  Will we condone the corruption in our midst by failing to show solidarity and standing together? Are we relying on others to risk suffering in their pursuit of a better life for us all?

Without sacrifice there is no gain. Doing nothing is equal to condoning the rot.

Suddenly Jesus’ dying a cruel and painful death, makes more sense to me. It was his suffering rather than his loving that awoke humanity to the cruelty and stupidity of their self-righteous and judgemental ways. For out of suffering comes appreciation and awareness.

Perhaps we all just need to suffer some more. We need to suffer until it hurts us enough and propels us into action.

Have you suffered enough? Are you prepared to risk all in order to live? Happy pondering.

All my love

Nicolette