“It’s a fragile thing, this life we lead. If I think too much I can get overwhelmed by the grace by which we live our lives with death over our shoulders. Want you to know that should I go I always love you, held you high above too. I studied your face. The fear goes away.” – Eddie Vedder
We do not know when we will take our last breath on this planet during this go round and we hardly think about it. And if we ponder the subject of death too much, we begin to worry about every single thing we do.
We live our lives with this knowledge close to the surface, but at other times we live with reckless abandon. We see death very differently at the beginning of our lives as we feel invincible as children.
Children are closest to the truth of knowing that we are eternal. But as time goes on our egos develop, and we learn to be in the world, and then we realize that as human beings we have an expiration date. And while we realize this with our human minds, ours souls cannot fathom it.
Did you ever notice that it is impossible for us to imagine we will not exist? Just like we cannot conceive of infinity—though we know it intellectually–we cannot integrate the fact that we will cease. Our human brains simply cannot comprehend that one day everything will stop. And this is because the truth is that everything will not stop. Our essence will always exist. We are infinite. Our higher-selves unconsciously takes that knowledge to the forefront by prompting us to live each day as if it will never end, which is why we know deep down in our souls that life doesn’t end.
At the beginning of this post, we quoted lines from Pearl Jam’s Sirens not to accentuate that death looms closely, but to demonstrate the solution for the quandary: Love takes the fear away. We see that as the message underlying the lyrics. Death does not destroy love. Quite the contrary, love laughs at death’s door.
While the song focuses on death, it actually calls on our inner knowing about love. Love after all is the healing life force we desire, and the fragility of life simply reminds us of its importance.
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