When day is done

I scan the obituary notices in the local paper.  Not because of any morbid curiosity.  Not because I want to know if anybody I know is dead.

I scan them for three important reminders about life.

One: We all die.

Two: I will also die.

And, therefore, three: we all age, if we are lucky enough to live long.  Our youthful years recede farther and farther in our rear-view mirrors.

I have blogged in plenty, like here, about how when we see old and frail people, we see them only as old and frail people, and forget that they, too, were once young and lively and energetic.  If we paid attention, then we will understand that the old and the frail are also constant reminders of what is coming our way.  We see the future every day, yet we so easily dismiss what we see, as if that future will never be our own stories as well.

Of course, this is nothing new.  It is very much a part of the story of the Buddha himself.

Remember that story?  Siddhartha was raised in a bubble where the misfortunes of life were hidden from him.  Siddhartha did not know anything about the human suffering,  And then, one day, he ventures out and finds a dead person.  A corpse.  Siddhartha meets an old man, and now worries that he too might become old and wrinkly.  The metamorphosis of Siddhartha to the Buddha began. 

"Life is suffering and to live is to suffer," the enlightened later revealed to us.  We might try our best to defeat aging and death.  We share a desire to be free of suffering.  But, resistance is futile. Resisting it also means that we lose the wonderful opportunity that we have to enjoy the here and the now.

If only we understood carpe diem and YOLO along these lines!

No, I did not wake up thinking about all these. I think about these all the time!

Enjoy, before the day is done!