06.26.09
On Death and Living
What a shock it was to hear that Michael Jackson passed away yesterday. It was strange and sad enough to learn that Farrah Fawcett had passed, but then the same afternoon the news of Michael Jackson’s death was plastered all over the net. I remember when Farrah Fawcett was one of Charlie’s Angels. I used to watch it regularly, and so when she died, it was strange and sad. For a moment old feelings of when I was much younger watching her TV series came to mind. Then the news of Michael appeared, and although I no longer have any of his albums and know that he had a bizarre life, I felt moved to tears. I don’t really know why, but again old feelings of when I was much younger re-surfaced and it’s like a part of my history has gone. Strange, since I never personally knew Michael, but I suspect that millions of people are feeling a similar way, too. How many parties have many of us been to where Michael’s beat was electrifying the room. His Thriller album was popular while I was in high school. He had been around for so long, that I remember listening to him as a child up to even after I got married. I liken Michael’s passing to Elvis Presley’s death. I still remember where I was when I heard the news of Presley’s death–in a hotel room of Circus Circus in Las Vegas. I remember pulling out my journal and writing of his death in there. Now the world must be buzzing about Michael’s passing. How many times has his name been spoken and written down today? I would venture to say that relatively few people get world-wide recognition at their passing. Then again, how many people affect as many other people as Michael had? And to think that just recently I’ve been reading a book called, “Exterminate All the Brutes” by Sven Lindqvist where I was just thinking how many millions and millions of people have died in oblivion.
Regardless of our popularity or social status we all have a common end. In Lindqvist’s book he wrote of death when he thought he might die in a sand storm. This is what he wrote:
“Death was not included in my education. In twelve years of schooling and fifteen at various universities, I was never given any education in the art of dying. I don’t even think death was ever mention. . .
“. . .The Norwegian philosopher Tonnesen said that to think about anything except death is evasion. Society, art, culture, the whole of human civilization is nothing but evasion, one great collective self-delusion, the intention of which is to make us forget that all the time we are falling through the air, at every moment getting closer to death.
“Some of us get there in a few seconds, others in a few days, others in a few years–but that is a matter of indifference. The point in time is a matter of indifference; what is decisive is that the end awaits us all.
“What should I do during my remaining time? Tonnesen would have answered, ‘Nothing.’ He believed to be born is to jump off a skyscraper. But life is not like jumping off a skyscraper. It’s not seven seconds you have, but seven decades. That is enough to experience and achieve a good deal.
“The shortness of life should not paralyze us, but stop us from diluted, unconcentrated living. The task of death is to force man into essentials.
“That was how I felt when I was still not yet thirty and had a long way to go down to the paving stones below. I did not even see them. Now I can see them rushing up toward me and feel myself falling headlong.
“Then I realize something was missing in my education. Why have I never learned how to die?”
Of course we all know Lindqvist is right that eventually all of us will one day die. Well, technically speaking maybe a few such as those who get taken up in the rapture won’t have to suffer death. But for the most part we will have to endure passing from this life to the next. Until then what a great reminder there is in Lindqvist’s writings that “the shortness of life should not paralyze us, but stop us from diluted, unconcentated living.” While we still live and breath there is so much good we can do even if it seems insignificant at first blush. We are told in Micah 6:8 how God wants us to live our lives. And He doesn’t ask of anything too complicated from us that no matter who we are or how famous or not-so-famous we are we can all easily live as He hopes for us. I believe that if we follow the simple things God has shown us in Micah 6:8, we will live the fullest life.
“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
Marlakins
