One of the problems of living is the realisation that we are in fact dying.
This realisation can be quite depressing but often it galvanises us to be ultra active. We must use what time is left to us productively.
The mantra, "I must always be doing something" is usually met in life by our need to work and earn a living.
When one retires, a whole different scenario is presented, we have to find things to do and keep occupied. We feel guilty, as the days fly past, of not being active or filling the day adequately. It reminds me of the A P Herbert or was it John Betjemans refrain, - "thank goodness the sun isn't shining today and I don't have to go out and enjoy it"?
The pursuit of an even longer "stint at the wicket" requires so much precious time spent in trying to keep at bay the ravages of time. People get onto a vigorous treadmill, devoting each morning to hours of mindless activity.
When young, exercise is good, it develops the young body and encourages healthy competition but trying to stay young by pounding the streets in a lycra shirt and shorts seems to demean the term, "growing old gracefully".
How do we make sense of growing old.
If we are comfortable with the end, how can we fill in the time between. Should we now devote the time in trying to understand our "passage" to date and more importantly the implications of the "end game" and how we come to terms with not being a part of all we know any more.
The study by the mind, of how we "imagine" and "create" so much of our own personality from raw beginnings, means that at the end we realise there is more to who we are than the skin and bone that others recognise as, the me !!
If this is true then the composite me continues in so many ways not least in the good and the bad of past actions.
Religion has a strong hold on the belief that millions hold of life's outcome. The problem is that instead of a rational set of postpositions, one has, at the end of a perfectly well argued way to live ones life, (according to moral and ethical precepts), to indulge in a massive leap of faith to believe in Judgement Day.
Philosophical arguments on the other hand make much of ones mental capacity, to grasp the importance of reflection and the ability to dig behind what we take for granted.
Philosophically based belief systems can help bridge the gap without need to resort to a leap of faith.
The teaching is rooted in a series of questions about ourselves, it require us to tone down our consumption led lives, our acquisitiveness and ask the question do we gain true measurable happiness or are we supplanting another human condition, "suffering", with a short time fix. If our lives are built on the wrong foundations can we, through turning inward, construct another foundation which takes in everything around us and "integrates" us all.
Only the mind has the power to grasp and realign who we are. Only the mind has the power to put into perspective the condition we are in. Only the mind can imagine, "living and dying" and treat these two imposters as the same !!!
No comments:
Post a Comment