Last month I wrote about change. Now, as the days get shorter, ironically, I find myself longing for things to just stay as they are; I like the longer days, the sun rising early, the warmer weather and the blue skies. The summer days are about to become a distant memory, and I find myself working hard to just “accept what is” – which is what brought me to today’s topic. Death. Wait, what? I know, dramatic right? Just stay with me if you haven’t closed out this message yet, read on; after all, let’s face it, death happens to be the one thing we ALL have in common, so it is worth exploring.
Life in Focus
Death has this way of putting life into perspective. Think about it for a moment, have you ever been in a life-threatening situation and worried what your hair looked like or how much money you had in your bank account? I doubt it. When looking death square in the face, we tend to err on the side of self-preservation. More importantly, when dealing with someone else’s death, or the threat of our own death, especially in hindsight, there is a tendency to zoom out – to see the bigger picture. Let me give a personal example of this.
The Death Sentence
In 2017, my mother was sent home from the hospital on hospice. She was of sound mind enough to jokingly refer to this situation as her “death sentence”. As a result, our lives, as her family, were quickly rearranged to prioritize our time with her during her final days. We go our entire lives knowing someday we are going to die, but when you are given an actual “death sentence” as my mom so eloquently put it, we quickly reassess what truly matters. Odd if you think about it.
Time Spent
I felt incredibly fortunate that I was able to spend time with my mom while she was on home-hospice. The uniqueness of the situation was not something I overlooked; especially considering we had lost my father in a car accident when I was very little. That was an abrupt and tragic loss that rippled through the rest of my upbringing. Although I was not old enough to understand at the time, I grew up with the awareness of death and the importance of being able to say goodbye. During my mother’s final 46 days, I found myself aware of a lot of things. The one thing I was most aware of was all the ways she had wanted to spend her time but never got around to it. She had big dreams that she never realized – her light slowly dimmed until it finally went out. Her passing truly brought meaning to my life and how I have chosen to spend my time since. It helped me to reprioritize everything!
Essence and impact
This is not meant to be an article embracing a “YOLO” (You Only Live Once) kind of attitude where we all just throw caution to the wind and live like it is our last day on earth. On the contrary, my passion for this topic comes directly from my quest to find “my purpose”. During my quest, I have found that it is not so much about finding a personal “purpose” rather, how we spend our time and what kind of “ripple effect” our time spent is having. Who are we impacting and how? What kind of energetic essence are we emanating out into the world, and can we be more aware of that? For example, have you ever had someone get angry with you in traffic? A complete stranger who acts out, maybe flipped you off? If you are like me, that feeling likely sat with you all day; you may have even carried it home with you to other members of your household or anyone else you encountered. That is the ripple effect. Our essence in the world has a bigger impact than we may realize.
So what? We are all going to die anyway – why does it matter?
Glad you asked! If our impact – our ripple effect – carries more weight than we can truly fathom, shouldn’t we at least try to harness that power for the good of everyone, or at least the good of those around us? Since our time here is limited, and no one really knows for certain what the meaning of life is, shouldn’t we make our own meaning of it? What if our only legacy is to have people remember the positive impact we had on them? I realize I am asking rhetorical questions, and I have slowly lured you to the deep end of the pool but still, stay with me! One more question, consider this, what if just by simply having the awareness of the energy ripple we put out into the world has the power to change an outcome? Would you shift your energy – your ripple outward? To take it one step further, what if by having a positive ripple outward, you created the same ripple back to you? I think these are powerful questions to reflect on.
Making Sense of All this Death Talk
To wrap up my thoughts for this month, it is easy to take our time on this earth for granted. It isn’t until we are faced with our potential demise, or the loss of someone close to us, that we begin to reconsider our priorities – how we spend our time and the ripple effect we may have. I was inspired to write about this topic because of the deep soul-searching I have been doing for many years that led me to seek meaning and purpose. It was as if my “higher-self”, if you will, was nagging me from within to be more aware of the essence I put out into the world. It is my opinion that we tend to get busy with life and forget the impact we may have just by being so perhaps asking ourselves some probing questions and being more aware of how we spend our time is, in itself, our truest purpose. Thank you for taking this deep dive with me! If you read this far, message me and let me know! I would love to hear from you!