Lately I have been pondering the nature of death, what it really is. Is it closing your eyes one last time never to wake up? Or is it something more subtle, more unnerving—something much closer to home? When I look back through time to the teenager I once was, that person is not here. He is dead, and he has been dead for a very long time. But because I am still strong and somewhat clear of mind, I can forget that death and focus on the present life as if it now unfolds. But the reality is, there are moments, days, circumstances that I would hold onto for eons if it were possible—but they have long since passed and are dead.
The Distant Self
Perhaps the movement between carnal death and birth is much the same. Even after that point of presence jumps from our last breath to some unfathomable new context, there is a recognition somewhere in our newly manifest being that something has been lost—a past and fully developed identity. Perhaps this death occurs on a lesser scale over and over throughout the experience of living. And those who see this most clearly are those who still live after everything else has been lost, and all they have left is to struggle for moments of clarity while wasting away in a nursing home.
