Facing Our End

Death is a theme that I have referred to a lot already before. You might consider this topic as sad and uncomfortable to talk about. And I don't want to give you the impression that I'm obsessed with the subject. So, there's no danger that if you meet me on a social occasion that I'll bring up the topic. On the contrary, I find myself joking about life. Since I became a full-time wheelchair user, I also find ways of mocking the way people perceive me due to my impairment. Indeed, when I feel down, I do search for conic relief.

But aren't the fact that we find comedy enjoyable because, if well done, reminds us that life can be absurd? Isn't comedy a way we are free to mock ourselves and our human habits and customs? Isn't comedy a way to deal with death and misfortune?

Obviously, death is not a joke. But consider the many plans we make in life that we never realise. The promises we make to leave what's important until tomorrow. And, to our dismay, we are thrown a surprise party by the grim reaper with it's gift of death. We don't like to think of these things of course. But sometimes I believe it's important to find a time to ask these questions as, at least for me, we would failing to make the best of what we have.

Some of us seem to live for money, pleasure and never bother to look in our own hearts and minds. It could be simply because we're afraid that we will find nothing if we delve deeper. But when we are made aware of death, then we cannot hide from our fears.

I loft one of my brothers when I was less than a few months old. Perhaps that it's why I became aware of how close we are to death and how existed is impermanence. At the sane, I was growing aware that my physical impairment made me an imperfect human specimen in both the eyes of the clergy and the scientific establishment. Indeed, people still associate impairment with death, or a reminder of their own mortality.

Thus, my hope and belief in God often conflicted with what I regarded a punishment - my impairment. And I tried to find meaning to why I was born and to why my brother had to die. But it was a fact, I knew, that my life, like a burning candle, could be extinguished just like that. And it didn't matter how long or strong the candle stick is, it only takes a breeze to put out the flame.

I wish to end on a positive note. The fact that we become aware of the impermanence of life, the more we can appreciate the precious beauty of daily life. We also realise that, at the end of the day, we are all the sane when it comes to dying. In other words, despite our many differences and disagreements, we share that inevitable end that faces us as human beings and, ultimately, connects us to every living thing on our planet.

Stepping into Introspection

In order for you to understand a little about where I am coming from, it's important to explain what I consider were significant influences on my life. Inasmuch as we may claim to be objective in everyday life or when discussing issues of life and death, we can't completely separate ourselves from who we were and who we are today. Indeed, the way we experience reality often determines the shape of this 'reality' itself. In other words, we often see things as we think they are and not as they really are because we conceive them as such. Experience plays a significant role in shaping this process. This is why I feel that it's important to go beyond providing you with an account of a recent experience I had in hospital. On the other hand, it would be impossible to describe how I think experience has shaped my outlook on life and death.

There are two reasons for that. The first is obviously related to time and space. To list every experience that influenced my outlook would take a lot of time to complete and, besides boring to the blog reader, it would also be largely irrelevant to what I am trying to achieve here. The second reason why listing all the experiences that affected me throughout life is that it would be humanly impossible. Indeed, there are so many things that I forgot or that I don't recollect well or even countless others I am not aware have affected me.

However, I believe three experiences in my life can illuminate you with why I am writing this blog today. As I said already, I may have chosen these issues as relevant only because think they are significant in providing you with a context. In no particular order, these are the events that directly or indirectly define me as a person:

• The reality of death and mortality.
• The awareness of change and difference.
• The search for meaning and faith.

Over the coming days or weeks, I hope to elaborate on the experiences underlying the above themes. Eventually, this will lead us closer to the reasons behind this very blog's existence.

The Gifts of Boredom

Since I started this blog, I can’t help asking myself whether it was a good idea after all. Indeed, who I am to ponder the questions that have troubled human beings since the beginning of human time? And when I speak of religion and spirituality, am I really mature enough to know what they really mean? And besides, who is really interested in considering the profound questions posed by consciousness and awareness that “knows that it knows”? Yes, part of me is also curious about how many people on the net are actually reading what I am trying to express here.

Since the start of this year, I had to spend a considerable amount of time in bed due to a medical issue. While, thanks to technology, I could still keep in touch with my friends and what was happening in the world, the fact that I had to spend many days away from work and life in general meant that I was frustrated. To make things worse, a back problem rendered me even more helpless than I ever was. It can be a boring life, I admit, and considering my previous life as a disabled activist and researcher which was quite a fulfilling one, this new life seemed empty and pointless. Where was my life going?

It’s surprising how when we are faced with considerable time on our own without much to do, we start noticing things about who we are that we may miss during our busy lives. We have the time to revisit past memories and even dwell on things we wish to do but cannot do. We even resolve to change how we live our life as if it was the new year. And I couldn’t help reflecting on my own fragility after being rendered helpless due to a toe infection and back pain! I also thought about the time in my late teens when I was close to death. Then it was far worse, I admit. Yet, my concerns about my purpose in life and, by extension, the nature of death; returned to haunt me.

This thirst for answers and hunger for purpose reawakened a part of me that I had forgotten or buried deep in my unconscious. A sort of emotion, feeling, state - I can’t find the right word. But I think that it could be best described as my spirituality. While I have already talked about the pitfalls of religion, this is the place I would look for answers. After all, religion is not the problem itself but rather it is how people manipulate religion to suit their ends that is the problem. 

However, before threading any further into my spiritual journey, I owe it to you to provide some background information about my relation to religion and spirituality because it is central to understand how my present outlook developed over the last months.

Death of Religion

Last time I posted, I left you with a question some of us may have asked ourselves. Even perhaps as young children trying to get to grips with the death of a dear pet or, somewhat more troubling to us, the death of a relative or close family member. I admit that I was too young to remember the death of my brother. But the fact that I never got to know him as a person has prompted me to ask the question why do we have to die on many occasions in the past. Not that I'm in any way a necrophile, or a lover of death, but that there are times when I feel that I need to retreat and examine my life.

There is much truth in the Socratic statement positing that the unexamined life is not worth living. Indeed, I have gone through times when I was absorbed in my own bubble, thinking I knew all that I needed to know and tied to a rigid view of the world. You probably know the name of this period in life. Adolescence.! It's a great tine when you can afford to be idealistic, perfectionistic in my case and very preoccupied with fitting in. Drop in some arrogance and a good dose of hard headedness and you have it: the teenage mindset. Yes, I was perhaps being too hard on my past self for it was a time when I could dream without much concern about any practical consideration.

I don't want this blog to become an autobiography. But the point here that when we are young, we tend to believe that we will live forever. Then again, I knew that wasn't the case and people die. For no reason and at no defined time. And while death saddens us, the realization that our lives are temporal and finite should make us appreciate the unique opportunity we have to be alive. Mind you, there have been dark moments in my life when I felt that the pain caused by sickness and poor health or, equally painful, the sense of abandonment and isolation that I felt then, I would rather have avoided.

On the other hand, this doesn't mean that they were devoid of any value. They did help me wake up to the fact that I had fallen into a vortex of cynicism and apathy. I was going through this life of mine without purpose. However, when I got close to death on the summer of 1998, I knew that my life had hit the bottom and started sinking. I started to ask myself whether my life would end soon. I was unsure of what to expect on the other side. My Catholic upbringing taught me about heaven and hell, Jesus and the plan for salvation. Or damnation!

Of course, I knew that Christianity went beyond simply heaven and hell. Indeed, Christian faith like Judaism before it, manifested a human hope for a better today and tomorrow, even after our lives are apparently ended. Unfortunately, even if I knew that the basic principles of both Judaism and Christianity were the same - to bring love and compassion - history is replete by use of violence to impose dogma and belief on another people. This, however, is not unique to Christianity but has happened in the case of Islam and Hinduism in history. It is also happening today.

But how do religions based on love and compassion end up causing so much death and destruction?

Why do we have to die?

If you consider the many ways we express who we are and the different rolls we take on during our lives, it's not difficult to appreciate that how we define ourselves is dependent on context, our background and mood at the time we engage with the world and our inner selves. In simple terms, we have a need to express ourselves in a variety of ways, such as through artistic creations, scientific endeavours or by religious or spiritual practice.

While we may have a preference for one area over another, the fact remains that our attempts to express who we are and thus define who we are stems from a need to defy death in our own way. Whether this entails leaving a masterpiece, make a new discovery or even have children, we want to be remembered and gain a kind of immortality . Ironically, even those wanting to end their life by committing suicide are trying to tell the world something that we aren't noticing or are so lost in our private worlds that we see only as far as our inner circle.

These are important questions, and require some thought and more investigation. And I feel that I've neglected this aspect of myself which also defines who I am. Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to struggle for the rights of disabled people like myself. But, I'm at a stage of my life where I need to take a good look at my priorities in life and think more about whwant to achieve in life.

The experiences that impairment and the manner society has reacted to me (often disabling me) and all the adaptations I learned to make to address any limitation of the body, have influenced me for life. And even if many may assume my physical and sensory impairment were sources of great sadness and disappointment, my experience tells me a different story. Indeed, on the contrary, my apparent limitation has forced me to swallow my pride on many occasions. It also placed me in situations where I had to find alternative solutions to tasks that average people take for granted. More importantly, my differences have helped me refrain from judging others by their appearances because I knew how strangers have judged me.

But it's a trap when you think you can fight these forces by living a life that affirms your right to humanity. The risk is that by doing so, you become enslaved to a cage of your own making. In other words, you become stuck in a one dimensional reality. As a consequence, you avoid or neglect the other aspects of your life that you cherished since childhood. In my case, my longing for answers, my love for writing and my hunger for meaning. Ultimately, our quest for a degree of immortality and our thirst for purpose in life are our way of dealing with a Hunan concern.

Why do we have to die?

Awakening

I admit that I started this blog in an attempt to capture an Experience that changed my outlook on life in many ways. As you probably figured out by now, I don't have a defined plan or know what will emerge during the course of my writing. The fact is that I don't understand much of what is happening in my mind that much myself. What I can honestly say that, in many ways, I have changed.

Let me try to explain...

When all of a sudden, life seem to contradict your model of how the world works. When the priorities of your life appear less important. When you find yourself asking the questions that you thought settled again. Then you become exposed to an indescribable emptiness and vulnerable to the prospect of nothingness. When you realise, like the Jewish prophet Qohelet that life is vanity... Vanity of vanities!

This experience is personal inasmuch as it is universal. It's like waking from a long dream, only to realize that it was an illusion. A mirage that fooled you that you were drinking cool water, when in reality you were burning your stomach with scorching sand.

That's why it's often referred to as an "awakening". But when you wake up from the dream of a world which seeks only for itself and believes that its immortal, then you must be careful not to fall asleep again.

For even if it can be a lonely place, a state of awakening is a precious space in time that provides you with the opportunity of real growth.

The Experience

I am at a point where it's appropriate to tok about the experience that prompted me to reassess my life and reexamine reality. While there are other events in my life shaping my outlook and which, inevitably, affected my interpretation of events, I will limit myself to this one.

When I was in hospital for treatment, I needed to spend a few weeks as an in-patient. I shared a room with four men - all in their old age. I'm mo stranger to being in hospital but it's never a happy occasion. Worse still, it was the holiday season and you sense a change of mood as people celebrated Christmas and the New Year. And there I was in my room, partly bored and partly frustrated, as I was stuck inside. It didn't help to see that my room 'mates' didn't stay for long as they were either transferred or sent home.

During the last days of my stay, an elderly patient was brought in from intensive care. He was still in a bad state and was obviously pain and discomfort as he spent hours on end shrieking, screaming and swearing. Nights were particularly difficult as I would be awakened by hellish shriek follow by more terrifying shouts and more cursing. To this day, I feel an uneasy feeling when I recall that night. By the morning, the man seemed to have quieted down and little commotion was to be heard from his bed.

In the afternoon, the alarm belles sounded after a nurse checked on him. I was preparing for a nap I think when the nurse rushed for assistant and a defibrillator was brought in a desperate attempt to resuscitate the mam. The man was certified dead. However, the man had probably been dead for some time already. And I and the two other men who shared his room hadn't noticed. Indeed, we were relieved that we were having a quiet afternoon after a hard night kept awake by incessant and unsettling, cries. Cries, it would turn out, where of a dying man.

I was always aware of the possibility of death, but I was never so close to death as I was on that day. Never did I imagine how silently the hand of death could strike. I was shaken after I realized that a man had died and I was none the wiser. That life could end so unremarkably. That all of a sudden, a life ended after a futile struggle, yes, but still... Even if you know that life has to end, you cling to the delusion that you'll live forever. And that only natural but at the point when you are displaced of your usual routine, you cannot help but search for answers.

We want some kind of explanation, a hope and a purpose to our lives. We find comfort in religion, science, art or any way that justifies our existence. Otherwise, we can attempt to escape from death by forgetting or else live our lives indulging in self-pity and melancholy. Either way, we are avoiding to deal with an everyday reality - even if, in our clinical world, death tends to happen behind closed doors and masked by euphemistic phrases.

There... I told you! My experience. Nothing out of the ordinary. But yet, for that man, and for all those who came before and since who died,
It's a unique and singular event. It is unrepeatable in this life and what follows death is a matter of faith and speculation. But even when we claim that there's nothin after death, we are afraid and perhaps more if we don't believe in a reality beyond.

I've been here before. I thought I was satisfied with my life. But being a silent witness to a man's last hours. Being so indifferent to a dying man, until it was finished. To die alone like that. Perhaps riddled with anger and regret. But who am I to judge? And, what about my life, where was it leading me to?

It's here that I turned my attention inwards and reached within for an answer...

Re-Mind-Er

I don't know how to explain what this blog is all about. So, if you find my writing to be unclear or nonsensical, you may be right. Inasmuch as I love to write when I cam, I acknowledge the potential pitfalls our words can lead us to. This is even truer perhaps when we try to capture an emotion or a feeling we have. When we attempt to talk or conceive of thoughts happening in our own minds!

I find that many take our minds for granted. That is, until we develop problems or we are forced to reflect about such things as where our lives are going and, ultimately, on what our purpose in life is. It's true that there may be no real purpose for us being alive and it's all wishful thinking or downright human pride to believe that we have any purpose for living. However, we still seek refuge in an idea or believe to guide us on.

I'm not simply talking abut atheists here, for even a non-believer may have a strong sense of ethics and morality. Rather, I'm talking about the reality of human existence which doesn't emerge in isolation. Inevitably and may be shocking, the fact is that we need other people to define who we are. But you knew that already, didn't you?

And yet, we seem to forget this. Until we are placed in a situation where we encounter a problem or need help. Then we realize that our belief in an autonomous, independent and sells-sufficient persons (we think we are) are only partly true. That our perception of the world is influenced by those who came before us and those in our world. There's no escaping this for even the claims made by some that they are 'unbelievers' is a human construct that has been around since the mythical Eden.

I'm not claiming that our lives are the same or that we can speak of a state of equality between people and nations. This is the unfortunate condition of our world unless we become aware of our common humanity. Our basic vulnerabilities in face of death. And that is partly why we are afraid to die. We are afraid to lose what we have and, worst of all, of losing our own identity. We are scared of being alone in an unknown state.

Yes, it will happen. Are we prepared? Am I prepared?

Being in Time

The question that I'll be asking here a lot is related to being or to who we are. I have been asking that question early on in my childhood. I would gaze at the heavens at night wondering at how little our planet was when compared to the vastness of the universe, the stars and the unknown beyond. And yet, I was here. Was there a reason?

I think these concerns grew stronger as I was painfully aware that this life would someday end. It was not a reassuring to realize, as a boy, that tomorrow may never come. That there will be a day when. When, what exactly? And even if we try to forget, the life we have today may end at any moment and without warning. That is life, or death really.

At the same time, this realization makes life ever more precious and our experience as human beings unique. We often view ourselves as if we were immortal and indestructible. As if we are separate from others. Indeed, we are bold enough to define ourselves as individuals. But, in reality, do we know who we are? Or do we think we know?

Let's face it, most of us do not choose our first names. I was called Gordon. And that name itself has a history and a legacy. I didn't choose my parents and didn't choose to be born. Even if I'm grateful of having my parents and of being alive. I didn't choose to be born in Malta. I could go on forever.

Neither do the ways I define myself can be regarded as purely my own. I am a son to my parents, a brother to my siblings, etc. But what would this mean if a family didn't exist? I am an employee, a student and a disabled person involved in activism. But what about the social, political and cultural leaps essential for these ways to describe ourselves to be possible? And, without the Internet and social media, would being a blogger make any sense?

And consider the millions of factors and conditions that were crucial in making now possible. From the fact that my parents decided to have you and me, that they survived these years to choosing each other. Not to mention their linage back to pre-history - even back to the first forms of life on planet Earth. What about the creation of the Earth itself? With the perfect conditions for life, including the position of our planet to the sun and the fact we have a moon.

And yet, it doesn't end there. The genesis of the universe with its matter and energy - all coming from a point so early in history that it defies our understanding. We may logically discount all these factors to mere luck. We may come up with a theory,or even a law, explaining everything that happened to the last detail.

Yet, these answers would go only so far as explaining How it happened, but not come close in enlightening us on why it happened. Ultimately, scientific enquiry on its own will not answer an essential question we were asking ourselves since we gained self-awareness.

What is the meaning of life?

Beginnings

I have so much to say and so little time to express it. Of course, convention holds that I should start b y an introduction explaining what this blog is about. And, perhaps, to tell you a bit about myself and where I an coming from.

Yes, I could do all that. It would be my chance to reach out to you, who is unknown to me as I am unknown to him or her. In a way, it would be always incomplete or even false to tell you about myself. After all, these days I an realising that I don't really know who I an.

No, it's not a case of amnesia or a quarter life crisis. I just realised that beliefs I held for many years don't hold true. The events that have occurred in by personal life had a part to play in this change of mind. As the unfolding crises in the world, ranging from the natural to the humanly created also had an influence.

Having said all that, the fact remains that this first entry doesn't begin from here. To talk about its actual origins, we need to go back to the beginning of humanity. And ultimately to the beginnings of tine, space and matter itself.

And even then, we may miss to discover the nature of ultimate reality...