Tag: Death

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Uncertainty

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Uncertainty is what is happening now. The world is on fire according to the news of the day. If it’s not one thing that the world is doing to destroy your life, your world, your family, your fitness, your health, it’s another thing.

The phrase that is being used today or the versions of it are, “In these uncertain times.” or “These challenging times,” or, “These difficult times.” Well, it always is those things.

You see the world has always been difficult and uncertain. It’s likely not news to you. But, there is a suggestion in today’s thinking that fairness is a right. That freedom from disease, pestilence, or destruction is a birthright, well it’s not.

Uncertainty is Natural

In 2004 a 9.3 earthquake created a tsunami killing about 280,000 people.

In 1870 the Bhola cyclone in Bangladesh killed half a million people.

The central China flood of 1931 killed an estimated 2 million people.

12 million Ukrainians starved to death by Stalin’s oppressive starvation of their country and subsequently, there are an estimated 6.1 million birth defects because of malnutrition.

Beginning in 165 AD the Galen Plague in Rome killed 2000 people a day.

No, it’s not special it’s not rare it’s a blip on the radar of history and here we are in these present times.

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius the famous stoic said, “Reject your sense of injury and the injury disappears.” Now a broad statement and hard to deal with when you’re talking about some of the tragedies, I listed but many things can be dealt with in that fashion that Aurelius suggests.

Yes, terror, injury, pestilence, death, these things are brutal but if you deal with the idea of uncertainty, like Where am I going to get a haircut and what am I going to order out for dinner tonight or why can’t I go to the gym?

Now listen to the words of Marcus Aurelius, “Reject your sense of injury and the injury disappears.” History has a poker hand and it is ready for you and it is full of jokers. The only certainty you have is how you decide to hold the cards you’ve been dealt.

Here is another angle on the damage a negative view can create in your life: Fallen Stories

What would this be without a link to a TED talk?: Embracing Uncertainty | Joshua Bailey

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Ashes to Ashes

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Ashes to ashes, dust to dust is a classic statement used in funeral services. It’s not a prayer and you won’t find it in The Bible, although it is implied. It is found in the Anglican Book of Prayer on page 501 of the burial rite but enough about that.

Kids, the youth we’re all going through life and those groups of people believe that “Heck we’re gonna live forever!” It’s immortalized in songs, poems, movies, plays, etc. There are warnings about mortality as well, in just as many media, songs, poems, etc. It’s like the burial rite it is a statement of the inevitable.

Inevitability

There are three reactions you can have to this inevitability. You can live it up. Party until you want to stop or you die. That is also immortalized in song. There is another version of this which is to ignore it. And the third is to embrace mortality daily.

Here is the productive way that it should be handled. You see when we ignore it which is the way we live most of our lives, we ignore our mortality. That’s fine and dandy, we use that because it works for us. The, “Live it up until you die,” works well too. To celebrate a wedding or birthday, you know you want to live it up a little bit and you want to have a good time. Or you choose to kind of ignore the mortality that’s embedded in those events.

We can embrace our mortality and also not have it hang over us. You see all three of these are appropriate in context and content and useful. Imagine acting as if it was a funeral at a wedding? That’s disturbing, it’s dysfunctional as well. I’m sure you can conjure other visions of inappropriate behavior within an event.

Three Ways to Use Ebb and Flow

You know your life contains all three of these and this is how you do it well. You understand the content and you understand the context. The ebb, and the flow. You survive using these three methods of moving through the understanding of the mortality, your coming death.

So, in the end, balance is the key. It’s using these three different segments of understanding and using them to be tools. To not only be in the right place at the right time but to live into the moment as well.

Three Methods

Those three rules again are; To ignore your mortality (which is really what we do most of our lives). Or it is to completely live it up and partake of the wine and the festivities daily. And the other one is to remember our death is coming.

You can see how when used in the wrong context they don’t serve a purpose. If you understand these three roles and you use them in the right place, life becomes adroit, appropriate, and contextual.

Psychology Today: 5 Strategies for Accepting Your Mortality

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