Afraid You Were Dying
Today is a practical message. It’s for dealing with a moment when you thought you would die. A reminder to do instead of stay cool.
A lot of times, especially if you are a rock climber, bike rider, traveler, or look/act/smell/dress differently from the majority of people in your neighborhood, you might be inhabiting the fuzzy, nauseating zone between scary and dangerous. Scary means you’re doing something exciting and adventurous, beyond the thrill of a target run with very little risk of dying other than what the chaos of life can and will always deliver. Dangerous means death is close. Or you’re lacking the experience and knowledge to know any different.
What I love about scary is that you get to contemplate death from a safe distance in true reverence of its gravitational omnipresence, allure, finality, randomness. You breathe heavy and tense up with alertness and receive more of the intensity of life! Eyes narrow to the square foot of detail just in front of your face. In all the ways it operates, scary brings you closer to a vibrancy, appreciation and big appetite for the many ways of being alive. What I don’t love about danger is the harsh finality of a binary and missing out on the rainbow of the rest of your life.
The fuzzy zone though…when it’s not quite wild enough to be chugging fight-flight juice just before cardiac arrest, but the soles of your feet are still tingling because maybe you’ve made a crucial mistake and there’s no way of knowing at this point. That’s when death really commands your attention. Phone-free doom scrolling past the faces you love, the deep conversations you’ve long meant to have, long gone golden childhood feels and unspewed revenge for your gnarliest ex. You swear you’re a person who lives without regret, but for these 20 minutes you sure would have done things differently. If I die now, you swear to a god you normally dismiss, can you please tell grandma I love her, forgive my old roommate and feed the cat. Please take care of my niece, make her wild and strong. I should have called sooner, apologized, forgiven, backed off.
There’s no relief because the rock climb you’re on, or the red light you’re running, is actually taking some serious focus to get through. There’s no time to calm down. The prayers linger unresolved.
Ungrateful never goes unnoticed. The worst thing you could do is make it to safety and pretend you weren’t praying. The only thing to do is call each of those faces who joined in audience to your inglorious dress rehearsal for death, and recite every line of your prayers. Kiss their fingers and kiss their faces. Adore their breath, their scent and especially how annoying they are. Remind them they are perfect, even if their imperfections have wounded you deeply. Tell them the story about how you thought you were going to die trying to have fun, but then you didn’t, so you called and you’re so glad they picked up. Kiss their fingers and kiss their faces. Death has granted her greatest gift—the chance to say it out loud.