THE SCREAM
In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and in many traditions of serious contemplation, we find that one of the great epiphanies of living a full life comes through confronting death.
Author Jed McKenna suggests visiting graveyards, sitting on the edges of tall skyscrapers, and walking in lightning storms.
My old mentor James Baye led men into the pine forests of Vancouver Island, where they dug six-foot-deep graves and lay in them overnight.
I suggest something different.
Listen to the final radio transmissions of the pilot of Learjet N722BD, which crashed yesterday in Florida, killing all nine people aboard.
We contemplate death. We pause. We discern how the fear of death slows us down, and how the knowledge of death might actually free us.
But we live in a world filled with simulations. Movie after movie. Video game after video game. Violence, terror, death. Some of it portrayed by extraordinary actors capable of evoking profound emotion.
None of it holds a candle to the sound of a real human being confronting the terrifying reality that she may have only seconds left to live.
The words. The realization. The final scream.
That's not an actor. That's a human being.
I listened to it last night. And it shook me.
I've sat with dying people. I once found a dead woman in a hotel room. I've buried a wife, a mother, and a father. I've known people who took their own lives.
I've contemplated my own death and the meaning of my life in deep and profound ways.
All of it has helped me find the NOW. To live more fully, RIGHT NOW.
But none of those experiences affected me quite like hearing the final words and scream of that pilot.
The other day I was telling someone a story about one of my mentors.
He had a prayer about death.
His prayer was simply that when his time came, he would have at least a few seconds of awareness before he died.
Just a few seconds.
Enough time to express his gratitude.
Gratitude for this whole beautiful, sometimes awful, sometimes magical life.
Gratitude for the extraordinary people he had been blessed to share it with.
And perhaps that's the greatest gift of contemplating death.
Thank you.
Photo by Jesse Bauer on Unsplash