Experts (don’t ask me which experts but I heard it on that song by Macklemore) say that you die twice, once when you enter the grave and the second, the last time somebody mentions your name. As you might expect, these two occurrences are not occurrences that the dead in themselves experience, and we never know when either will happen. At best, what we know of death is speculation. For the ‘faithful’, there is a belief that beyond this life, there is another – one that is very much disconnected from this one as it is dependent on it but this piece is not about the death that I have mentioned in the first two lines of this post. The death I want to talk about is the death that no one talks about.
One day, I was running errands in sub-zero weather, wearing a jacket I had bought few days earlier to replace my coats that were no longer fit for the coming winter. While I walked, I was extremely pleased with this new jacket because just the day before, I had been out in a coat that did everything but keep me warm so the feeling of a jacket that was like a blanket was comforting. Soon, however, I realised my hands were freezing – not completely shocking since I had neglected to wear the gloves in my jacket pocket. A very simple thought crossed my mind that moment “these are the ‘little’ things that cause people to die out in the cold”. No one ever forgets to wear their jacket, but sometimes we forget that the ears get cold and a hat is necessary to protect them from the cold or that our trousers though fashionable, may need support from a pair of socks to make sure our legs survive the hostilities of the freezing wind. There is a death that creeps like the cold to your hands, ears, and feet in the winter.
We spend a lot of time worrying about the very big things in our lives that we forget that little foxes can and very well spoil the vine and as I reflect on it, I think of the parts of me that I have let die in pursuit of seemingly more important things. I used to really enjoy writing (I still very much do) and what writing did (and still does) for me is something I can barely explain but as you might have observed from my cyber silence in the past weeks, I have prioritized other things (including my laziness) above writing and posting. I used to do yoga every morning – not the very exciting stunts but decent enough yoga to clear my head to start the day. It turns out that I am chipping away from my mental and emotional health with every glove and hat I forget to take in this winter called life. I suppose not everyone is a writer or yoga enthusiast but I know that we often forget the little things that matter.
My friend recently reminded me that no one on their deathbed ever says they wished they had worked more and I think of that as a phone call from the afterlife, reminding me of what matters. In the end, none of us know how or when we will go and it won’t matter how many years before it is the last time someone mentions our name, we must live every day with care, loving and protecting ourselves from the spirit of fear which is what often drives us to places we have no business being.
