A River of Thought

[ornoth]

I’ve experienced some synchronicity regarding waterfalls and Buddhism recently, and I thought both of the following images were strong enough to warrant mentioning here. Both, of course, deal with our ignoring the fact of our own mortality, and what it means for how we live our brief lives.

The first is a poem by Kay Ryan. It goes as follows:

As though the river were a floor,
we position our table and chairs upon it,
eat, sit, and have conversation.
As it moves along we notice, as calmly
as though dining room paintings were being replaced,
the changing scenes along the shore.
We know—we do know—that this is the Niagara River,
but it’s hard to remember what that means.

She wrote it when her partner was diagnosed with cancer, and I think it captures perfectly the illusion most people live under: the ludicrous denial that we will all die, and not too long from now, either.

To most people, that will sound morbid and depressing, but I can’t think of any more valuable thing to hear. It’s the same message that people who are diagnosed with cancer hear, and often it’s the most liberating, life-changing message they’ve ever heard. Life is brief; there’s no escaping that fact, so don’t squander this precious treasure you’ve been given.

One of the ways philosophers have attempted to define intelligence is the knowledge of one’s own mortality. I think in many ways the measure of intelligence is in how one lives one’s life in response to that knowledge.

The second waterfall is something similar, an image described by Suzuki Roshi, the influential Soto Zen priest who founded the San Francisco Zen Center, in his “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”. When he visited Yosemite National Park, he observed several high waterfalls. He reflected on how the water was unified in one stream until it got to the precipice, and then as it fell, the water separated into millions of tiny droplets. How long and difficult the journey must be for those droplets, falling thirteen hundred feet onto the rocks below! He compares the droplets to our many separate lives, returning eventually to the oneness of all life.

Now, I’m not really bought into the universal oneness of all life, but the waterfall metaphor is still a valuable and stirring one. It illustrates how ephemeral our lives are, and how separate and individual we think we are, despite the fact that we are all traveling the same, well-worn and inescapable path into the abyss of death. All the commotion we make, pretending death doesn’t exist or at least won’t come for Me, seems a bit silly as we plummet headlong through our brief existence.

The question is: how would you live your life, if you knew it were going to end?

And more importantly: what is stopping you from living that way, since you know full well that your life is going to end?

Comments

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

I do know it's going to end, and it scares me sick when I think of it. It shouldn't, I know, since it happens to everyone and all, but it does. What I want to be doing is homesteading - growing my own food, cooking on a woodstove, using far less electricity, maybe even spinning my own wool. But I can't just blink and be there. Got to pack up and sell the one place before we can move to another one, and I am working toward it.

[rhillai.livejournal.com]

Well, Orny, most people don't have many near death experiences, if any, until they are older. So, most people go on about their lives as if they were going to live forever. The young are noted for their views of being "invincible".

But, I've had some throughout my life ... and I'm not even middle aged yet. So, I do live my life the way I want to. And i've had enough, well, other experiences that I have no fears and no doubts about what comes next. Eh, that's more than I usually say about this kind of stuff. Give me a call if you want to talk any more about it.

Mark

[dafyddcyhoeddwr.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose I've got a few salient thoughts on the matter.

Back last July when I was diagnosed with NASH cirrhosis, that whole "mortality" thing reared its ugly head. For a month or so, lying in bet waiting to fall asleep (so my brain would shut off), dying was most of what I could think about. Well, to be honest, it wasn't dying or death, but what I'd be leaving behind, and what I'd be leaving undone. Thoughts of who was going to clean my apartment (there's stuff in here that I really don't want my family seeing), how were my friends going to get notified (I don't have anyone close by who would be close enough both to me and to my friends to make that kind of announcement - I was contemplating asking my Mom or my sister to send a prepared message to all the right places, etc ...), who was going to be able to take over my programs at work (I even started working on ultimate documentation of my career management software, and I *hate* writing documentation!!!), how was I possibly going to finish my stories!

There was sadness, aloneness, "why me?", all that normal stuff, too. In fact, I finally took the step of getting an LJ account with the thought that I'd get all angsty and maudlin here, semi-anonymously (of course, the folks on my flist are pretty much the same folks who are on the email lists I would have been all maudlin and angsty on, that I didn't want to be like that on ...).

Time passed, and information began flowing in (those six+ weeks between the diagnosis and actually seeing a doctor again, getting to ask questions, learning that it wasn't all bad news ... well, not immediately bad news), and by the time I was on LJ all of those dark thoughts were gone. I've learned more and more, and even physically improved over the last few months to the point that one could say that I'm in better shape (dead liver notwithstanding) now than I've been in 15 or even 25 years, and death is no longer looming. All of those "what am I going to do about x" thoughts are no longer at the forefront of my brain. Unfortunately, not any of those issues has been resolved, and while my eventual transplant should go fine, one can never tell. HUPs Transplant Center statistics are pretty damn good, but their survival rates on the table aren't quite 100%, and their post-transplant survival percentages are only in the 90%s .....

So, right now I'm pretty much back to mostly the same mindset that I was in 2005 (if you discount the extra meds, the low-sodium diet, the 80+ lb weight loss that really does alter one's viewpoint, and the way-back-in-the-back-of-the-brain knowledge that my liver is dead). I'm not living my life significantly differently, certainly not in any more of a "for the moment" way. I've pushed myself into writing more, shoving out almost 6 stories (I should be finishing story 6 instead of writing this) plus 2 second drafts in 2 months (nearly a record, even for me). I spend most of my "free" time in my apartment, alone. I've blown off two chances this month alone to be out among friends, two more if you count the Bi-Unity meetings that I keep meaning to start going to again. Hard to meet people stuck in here, 'specially when the security phone in the lobby can't even dial my apartment ... (there go those angsty thoughts again).

I think that one of the things that last July brought clear to me was that there is never enough time. When I started working on my documentation thing, I was scared that I wouldn't be able to finish in time. When I started churning out stories in January, one and a quarter a week, it was because I wanted to get them done and I wasn't sure I'd be able to. I don't want to leave with anything unfinished, but it is impossible to finish everything, especially when you don't know when you're leaving. If I didn't have to go to work, I could finish Thread 6 as well. Then again, I like work, I like the projects I'm working on there (even if the users are utter ingrates who don't have a fucking clue how good they have it, and think the next buzzword is going to make everything better, even if they don't know what it means), and I want to finish them, too.

What I want is enough time, and when it comes right down to it, NASH cirrhosis or not, no one has enough time. Ever.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Nothing...

The balance as I see it is planning for the future while enjoying today. I stayed in college, which I hated, and stayed for an extra year to get a Master's Degree so I'd have a solid base for the future. If I found out I had a (quickly, say the next 4 years) terminal disease during school, I probably would have left school, because there would be no future.

But something that would last, say, past my 30's, and I would have stayed in school. Most of my worry comes, as someone above said, from wondering who would clean up my life. I'm not so worried about goals I have not met. There's only one experience that I long for, and that may or may not ever happen, and it depends on factors I have control over and factors I do not, so I try not to dwell on it, but try to recognize if I will have that opportunity.

But I have not had that opportunity yet, so there's nothing to lament.

I don't do things because I'm supposed to; I do them because I enjoy them. If I do something "traditional" you can be sure I've thought long and hard about it. I've been extremely lucky in that I've fallen into things that keep me happy and successful overall -- like computer science as a career. Although perhaps it's in the attitude and I'm happy with what I have (in general) no matter what.

I think for me the most difficult part of my own mortality is not knowing. That's the most difficult part of anything for me. I've had some pretty hard stuff happen to me, and the worst of it happens when I don't know what's going on. So some disease that can't be identified would be a worse experience for me than a disease I know I'd die soon from.

I also do not like that I am vulnerable. When I am sick, I do not like being helped -- I can do it myself, dammit, I just don't have the strength right now. :) I don't like being waited on when I'm vulnerable (I can do it on purpose). Heck, when I donate platelets, I try to do as much as I can, even though one arm is out of commission, and feel bad when the staff is opening a candy bar for me.

Somewhere in the late 1990's I decided that my goal in life was to be happy -- mostly, day to day happy, but that involves setting stuff up. Much like a chess game; ironically, I'm not good at strategy games. But I have $30k in my 401(k) and I'm not even 30 yet. I have a Master's Degree in a good field. I have a wonderful family (most of the time/overall) and good friends. I enjoy my days and don't feel stressed/pressured about work, socialization, etc. Pretty much, I do what I want.

Getting small things done makes me happy and satisfied. Not each day is a gem, but many days are pretty sparkly.