Life is a Temporary Condition
2010
(Warning: this is a depressing post!)
I watched a very thought-provoking movie last night with my wife. There were some very disturbing images in the movie of the holocaust and of various dead individuals, including children. The movie really grabbed at me and I was deep in tears several times throughout. There were scenes where a man finds his children all drowned in a lake (by their mother). He picks up each child in turn in disbelief. It was a gut wrenching scene that had me crying continuously. I wasn’t expecting such an intense film.
There were other images of the Death Train as found by the Americans at the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. The movie showed train cars spilling out with dead bodies. It was horrifying. After watching the movie I retreated to my office and decided to just embrace the moment. I did this by doing further reading on the Dachau camp. The photographs were terrifying. However, this was not the first time I’ve seen ghastly images of the holocaust. I then watched a disturbing documentary of the “holocaust in color”. During a particular moment when describing the ghetto in Warsaw, the film showed color video of very young children starving to death on the sidewalk as others walked by. Some showed footage of what is assumed to be dead children there, on the sidewalk. Just laying there, waiting to be saved, waiting to be noticed, waiting to be helped. But for many help never came. A truly innocent life that should be exploring the wonders of the world instead dies on a side walk of hunger while others walk by pretending to not notice.
This filled me with so much emotion. It was overpowering. The documentary went on. It described the liberation of several concentration camps. Locals from the nearby villages were forced by Allied troops to tour the death camps to see the horrors that their towns hosted. The footage shows locals, well dressed and unassuming, walking past piles of bodies. The horror on their faces shows that they will never forget that day. These images will surely haunt these individuals until the day they die.
Everyone knows of the horrors of the holocaust. We all know that legions of people die disgraceful deaths everyday in all corners of our world. We also know that our own deaths are inevitable. Yet we are so successful in not thinking about this, on keeping death out of our minds and away from our hearts. We fill ourselves with life and the hope of the future, pretending as if death is some distant thing that need not worry us until it comes. How easy it is to forget that we will die! When I’m talking to some coworkers about some trivial topic, do any of us realize at that moment that we will die? That we could die any time, and from any cause? Not at all. We talk as if death is improbable. Too far away to be of any concern. It is as if death itself is the trivial topic.
As I tried to sleep last night, I was haunted by so many scenes of death in my mind. Scenes of my own death, scenes of the deaths of those I love. I imagined my family in situations as experienced by countless families around the world. Trapped by an earthquake like that experienced in Haiti recently; flood waters taking my son away as happened to so many in Pakistan recently; having my family murdered in genocide like what has occurred in Rwanda, Cambodia, Nazi Germany, and so many other places and times in history. I imagined all of the innocent children who have had to experience death. Slow deaths. While as a child my only concern was to have fun, other children all over the world were dying disgraceful deaths. And they continue to die. Every moment of every day.
I was filled with so much death, I became overwhelmed. My mind had reached a psychological limit upon which the only cure was to purge my mind to allow me to sleep. Death is a rabbit hole that never ends. The mind cannot comprehend the infiniteness, the completeness, and the inevitableness of death.
This was not my first meditation of death. This appears to be an occasional exercise for me, although unintentionally. The Haiti earthquake was another event that triggered these same meditations within myself. It is as if death occasionally comes knocking at our hearts, and asks us to stare it in the face. Daring us to stare at it for as long as we can muster.
Rarely do my beliefs in a beautiful and evolving universe seem inadequate. But when I think of my own child dying, my mind wants to find something more to the universe to justify it. My mind wants to find a loophole that will allow everything to be right again. I see why it is so easy for people to blindly follow their faiths, no matter how illogical. For without it, we must accept the maddening rabbit hole of death for what it is.
This may be a particularly morbid post. Most individuals (myself included) will typically do what they can to stay upbeat and avoid depressing topics. But it is OK to occasionally remind ourselves of our love for our fellow human beings. To feel connected to each other through the unbreakable camaraderie we all experience through death. Thousands of nameless people die everyday. Take a moment to acknowledge them, in hopes that some day somebody will acknowledge you.
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